From his earliest inception, Batman has been tied to the noir genre. When Batman was first introduced by Detective Comics (now DC Comics) in 1939, the character and his stories were heavily influenced by the grittiness of the detective pulps of the time. Batman was a grim figure perfectly fitted to the world he resided in: part detective and part avenger. As the early character evolved over the course of the next issues he appeared in, he gained a tragic origin story worthy of any embittered or disillusioned noir or pulp protagonist. Not surprisingly, Batman was immediately extremely popular and by 1940, a year after the character’s introduction, he had gained his own comic book series.

But the world that Batman was being written in was soon changing, and by 1950s the series had taken on a lighter, more conventional comic book tone. These changes only intensified as comic books came under attack for their alleged “corruption of the youth,” and soon there was little in the Batman comics to connect the character to his detective pulp and noir origins. There were flirtations with science-fiction, and in the late 1960s the camp-filled Batman television program worked its influence over the comics as well.

Then in the late 1980s, Batman returned to his roots. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke brought Batman back to his grim, dark origins. Similarly, Miller’s “Year One” examined the Batman origin story with a heavy dose of noir themes like police corruption and gangland activities. In the 1990s, Batman: The Animated Series brought Batman-noir to television, painting the magnificent picture of a shadowy art deco Gotham City filled with plots, scheming, mystery and danger. The Batman franchise has even explored Batman’s noir themes in different settings, notably the dark Victorian story Gotham by Gaslight and the Lovecraftian The Doom That Came to Gotham.

G. D. Falksen loves noir in all its forms, and admires the magnificent way that Batman embodies and portrays the genre.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/batman-noir/feed/2Big Screen Batman: The Dark Knighthttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-the-dark-knight/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-the-dark-knight/#commentsFri, 04 Feb 2011 20:36:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-the-dark-knight/One thing that is terribly frustrating as a critic, trying to be objective about the merits of a given work of art, is that an outside circumstance with no direct connection to the work itself can develop an intextricable relationship with that work. So it is with The Dark Knight and the death of Heath […]]]>

One thing that is terribly frustrating as a critic, trying to be objective about the merits of a given work of art, is that an outside circumstance with no direct connection to the work itself can develop an intextricable relationship with that work. So it is with The Dark Knight and the death of Heath Ledger during post-production.

Ledger’s performance as the Joker, which only the people who worked on the movie had seen before he died, is astonishing, and deeply disturbing when seen posthumously. It’s as if a layer of protection usually in place to keep the true darkness of the human mind hidden was peeled back, and we were given a glimpse of what it means to be truly destructive, and evil. We’re told nothing verifiably true about him, left either to speculate, or to accept him as a symbol, a wild card, something for which it is impossible to plan. The question has been asked countless times, but never answered: would Ledger’s performance be as affecting had he survived to laugh it off on a late-night talk show, if he and his wife had walked the red carpet at the premiere?

We will of course never know, and in any case, as Ledger’s untimely fate is inextricably intertwined with the movie itself, we are left to evaluate The Dark Knight in the only way we can, as a movie of uncommon boldness and ambition, an unrelentingly grim epic whose theme is that if a man lives long enough, he will live to see himself become a villain (whether or not this is true of women as well is not addressed, The Dark Knight is a very male movie). It’s a measure of the skill that aids the ambition that in spite of Heath Ledger’s extraordinary, haunting Joker, equal focus is given Batman (the returning Christian Bale), and to “white knight” Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

The story of The Dark Knight is how, in a power vacuum in Gotham’s underworld created by District Attorney Dent locking up just about every gangster in the city, the anarchist Joker assumes control and systematically destroys the lives of as many people as he can before Batman kills him (if he indeed does; it’s ambiguous enough in the movie that if Ledger had not died in real life, the Joker could have returned in the sequel without a terribly straining suspension of disbelief). By the end of the movie, Harvey Dent has become the embittered, capricious, disfigured Two-Face and died, and Batman is forced to flee in disgrace, Gotham’s Public Enemy Number One.

Christopher Nolan’s unease with the action scenes is completely gone in The Dark Knight. His technique is near-perfectly assured; the qualification is only necessary that due to the amazing skill Nolan displays at creating and building drama that there are numerous dramatic peaks from which the momentum of the movie has difficulty recovering. In the wrong mood, these can derail the movie, but in every instance, Nolan is able to regain control over the tale, and deliver yet another stunning dramatic blow.

As gloomy a resolution as Batman’s public disgrace and enforced exile is, it is still a necessary layer to the character and his interaction with the world at large. Batman (and particularly Nolan’s Batman) is a character driven by dark impulses, who could just as easily be a villain as a hero. The Joker and Harvey Dent represent two alternate paths, the ultimate evil and the ultimate symbol of pure good, respectively. Nolan has Batman take the middle path, one fraught with moral ambiguity (Batman only foils one of the Joker’s terrorist plots by invading the privacy of every citizen in Gotham by hacking their cell phones) and destined to have at best mercurial popularity. Nolan’s Batman is not a strictly canonical one, and is largely Nolan’s own invention, but in spirit very true to what Batman has fundamentally been throughout his history as a character.

Christian Bale, by default, gives the best performance as Bruce Wayne/Batman. It’s not perfect, by any means—his bizarre, gravelly growl as Batman is both inexplicable and extremely hard to listen to—but his Bruce Wayne is by far the best yet captured on screen. Aaron Eckhart, before descending into a borderline-conventional bit of hammy villainy as Two-Face, does spectacularly well as Harvey Dent, convincing even the most hardened cynics of his absolute goodness; that every goodness is what compels the Joker to destroy him, as an absolute evil.

Heath Ledger’s Joker, posthumous legend or not, is still one of the most intense, disturbing characters ever seen in a movie. Unlike any of the Jokers who came before, who leaned with varying degrees of heaviness on the “joke” part of the name, Ledger’s is a clown the likes of which causes the phobia. He is never seen without his makeup, and as evil as he is, that makeup is almost a layer of ironic distance from the truly unmentionable evil beneath. Whatever laughter he causes is wary, nervous. It’s a very dark joke indeed that Ledger’s Joker is never explicitly seen to be dead, as the fear he represents is something one can never really escape; movies claim to banish that kind of evil, but they never can. It’s always there.

And so here we are, as Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, et al are preparing the latest installment, The Dark Knight Rises. They have quite the act to follow in the critically acclaimed (and billion-dollar-grossing) The Dark Knight. Batman, after a series of fits and starts as a cinematic character, is finally a figure in proportionate stature to the silver screen as he has been to the comic book panel for so many years. We the audience, like Gotham City so often, await his return.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-the-dark-knight/feed/33Unlimited Batarangs: The Video Games of Batmanhttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/unlimited-batarangs-the-video-games-of-batman/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/unlimited-batarangs-the-video-games-of-batman/#commentsFri, 04 Feb 2011 21:02:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/unlimited-batarangs-the-video-games-of-batman/The gaming industry has had a long love/hate relationship with the Caped Crusader. His popularity and iconic imagery are ripe for the gaming model. In spite of this appeal, Batman has long struggled to find his place in the pantheon of great game franchises. Unfortunately, most Batman games are notoriously awful. And not in that […]]]>

The gaming industry has had a long love/hate relationship with the Caped Crusader. His popularity and iconic imagery are ripe for the gaming model. In spite of this appeal, Batman has long struggled to find his place in the pantheon of great game franchises. Unfortunately, most Batman games are notoriously awful. And not in that “doesn’t look good I think I’ll pass” kind of way, but in the “this game is so bad I will write songs about it” way. We are talking E.T. caliber awful.

It’s a shame that there are so many terrible Batman games. The Dark Knight is the perfect character to feature in a game. His Batarangs, grappling guns, and other gear make great weapons and items. His vehicles, like the Batmobile and Batwing, make for great racing and flying levels. Batman’s rogue’s gallery is the most famous of any superhero’s, and who better to have as level bosses (as Batman fights his way to the inevitable confrontation with the Joker) than Riddler, Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and so on. It is also important to recognize that Batman is not a one-trick pony. He doesn’t just punch bad guys like the Hulk or shoot them with arrows like Hawkeye. He uses stealth, strength, and gadgets to defeat the villains.

The problem is that Batman games are often made as cheap tie-ins to Batman movies and TV shows. For example, nine games were published with the title Batman Returns for several systems when the film of the same name was released. Are any of the nine good? … Not really. And when a Batman game is released, it is often a blatant rip-off of some other popular game. And not just graphically, as in the case of Batman Forever, which featured the same graphics engine as Mortal Kombat. Down to the play control and interface, most Batman games are total knock-offs.

Ninja Gaiden vs. Batman (NES):

Contra vs. Batman: Revenge of the Joker (SEGA Genesis):

Double Dragon vs. Batman Returns (NES)

Final Fight vs. Batman Returns (SNES)

The Final Fight example is particularly surprising. Like Mike Haggar, Guy, and the the rest of those Capcom combatants, Batman collects food and weapons from trash cans scattered around Gotham City. One would think that with Bruce Wayne’s billions, Batman would not have to rummage through the garbage.

Now I know I shouldn’t be knocking licensed entertainment. I make part of my living as a licensed book writer. The Star Wars Expanded Universe was a gateway drug that led me to original science fiction literature. But my point is, when game designers set out to tell an original story, to do something unique with the game they are designing, the end product is almost always superior.

Which brings us to 2009’s game of the year, Arkham Asylum. This game took an original story, innovative controls, and allowed Batman to be Batman. It is no wonder this game is so popular. The fact that Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, the stars of Batman: The Animated Series (one of the most beloved incarnations of Batman ever) provided voices for the game didn’t hurt either. Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation pointed out at the time that many of Batman’s moves in this game are stolen from Spider-Man’s traditional arsenal. Batman dangles from the ceiling, snags a bad guy, and strings him upside down. But we won’t fault the creators for that. What makes this game so good is the characters, shining as the best (or worst) they can be. Scarecrow couldn’t be scarier. The Joker couldn’t be funnier. Even Poison Ivy was intriguing (although the epic battle against her giant plants was very similar to some old boss battles from Resident Evil games, and she could afford to put on some pants).

So how is the game industry following up this success? Another innovative new project? Holy sequels, Batman! It’s another Arkham game. That’s right. Arkham City drops later this year.

Matt London is an author and filmmaker who may have been first introduced to Batman through that Ninja Gaiden-esque video game you see above, but he can’t remember. He can claim to have beaten Arkham Asylum in a sitting (a very long sitting) and to have never beaten the first level of Batman on the Game Boy.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/unlimited-batarangs-the-video-games-of-batman/feed/5A Brief History of Batman’s Trunkshttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/a-brief-history-of-batmans-trunks/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/a-brief-history-of-batmans-trunks/#commentsFri, 04 Feb 2011 18:51:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/a-brief-history-of-batmans-trunks/Let’s get something straight here: they’re trunks, not underwear. Nobody but losers wear their underwear on the outside—and Batman ain’t no loser, see? We’ve lost many precious things as a society over the centuries, but perhaps one of the saddest would have to be the racial memory of the origins of superhero costumes. The ability […]]]>

Let’s get something straight here: they’re trunks, not underwear. Nobody but losers wear their underwear on the outside—and Batman ain’t no loser, see?

We’ve lost many precious things as a society over the centuries, but perhaps one of the saddest would have to be the racial memory of the origins of superhero costumes. The ability to look at the Caped Crusader’s fighting togs and see nothing but the proud heritage of the circus performer is slipping farther and farther away from us—and we are poorer for it. What was once simply a piece of apparel not too dissimilar to bathing trunks is now ridiculed as “underwear on the outside.” The universe weeps.

When Batman debuted in 1939, the tradition was still in its infancy but he followed the example of no less than the mighty Superman himself: skintight shirt and leggings with boots and cape and, yes, trunks. It was a look that spoke of adventure and thrills, not unlike that you’d receive under the Big Top of a traveling circus, and it would serve countless costumed characters for decades to come. Batman cleverly added a pair of gloves and a mask to the Man of Steel’s fashion sense and he was off to the races…

…and no one batted an eye. It was simply “what one did” among the superhero set.

The Dark Knight’s costume has changed very little over the past seventy years or so and when it has, it’s because some smartass came along and said something along the lines of, “He’s wearing his underwear on the outside!” And then the universe wept again.

One of the first major changes in Batman’s attire came about by accident, presumably. Oh, sure, it took a few issues after his debut in Detective Comics #27 to settle on his gloves (little ones, none, then long ones), but it was about a year later, around the time that Robin appeared, that Batman got the blues… and it wasn’t because of his tight trunks.

Bob Kane must have been an ink fiend because he chose grey and black for the colors of his creation’s costume, and, working within a medium that demanded that large black areas be broken up with highlights, settled on blue to provide those slight accents. That’s right; Batman was originally beautiful in black, not blue. The blues took over—how?—not sure. Lazy inkers? Could be, but the inside of Batman’s cape was given over largely to blue to break up the black even more and, well, somehow the blue spread and the next thing young readers knew their hero was punching his way through palookas in grey tights and medium blue accent pieces. And no one said a damn thing about his trunks. No one.

This costume served him well for years to come. Artists would come and go and add their own peccadilloes to the ensemble but, for the most part, you could recognize the Gotham Guardian every time you opened the magazine. His ears tended to shrink and grow and move around his cowl but, c’mon, did they ever really resemble bat’s ears? Around 1943, shorter ears became all the rage in Batman’s world and by the time artist Dick Sprang hopped onboard (and stayed for years) the short ears that sometimes resembled the petals of a flower were standard equipment. Then, hip, swingin’ artist Neal Adams would take it upon himself to return the ears to their towering status as the 70s dawned and they remain at their upright position to this day. They’ve become “bat-like” in our subconscious, though they, of course, are anything but.

And what about that scalloped cape? Like the ears, it too has expanded and retracted over the years but always retained those unique scoops along its bottom. Adams returned it to its salad days of 1939 when he gave that stretch of material the ability to add matter from nowhere and wrap many times around its wearer. One wonders how, say, the Todd McFarlane Batman of the 1980s was ever able to walk, run or swing with the unimaginable volume of Batcape he was saddled with. Still, I suppose that later artists had it in mind to use the cape to hide those ever more embarrassing trunks from impressionable readers.

Listen, pick up any Batman story from 1939 and up through to the 1990s and you’ll find a fantastic garment that never changes: the Bat-trunks. They did not ride up nor did they slip down; they served their utilitarian function of, presumably, protecting the Bat-bits and no one looked askance at them. Not until, that is, Tim Burton lurched into the (motion) picture.

What got into the ghoulish directors mind back in the late 1980s? His predecessors in the Bat-film department saw nothing wrong with trunks; both Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery sported perfectly acceptable pants in their 1940s serials, and Adam West’s getup stands as a fine screen adaptation of the 1950s-1960s comic book Bat-costume—albeit silkier and shinier. What crawled up Burton’s butt, then, and died? A pair of trunks, obviously. So, Michael Keaton was spared the horrible, horrible embarrassment of trunks, tights and a two-color palette and gained… black rubber. Movie audiences were also spared the shame, because, after all, the modern mind saw nothing but “underwear on the outside.” The universe sat right down and wept a river.

In the comics, Batman somehow held onto his trunks until 1995’s Batman #515. Remember when the Caped Crusader’s back was broken and then he got better and returned to crimefighting? Yes, well, his fashion sense obviously improved, too. In one scene, Robin and Nightwing look agog as Bruce steps out of the shadows to show off his new look. “Bruce… you… you’re back…” says Robin. “But… your costume…” Batman, drawn by artist Kelly Jones, grimaces like a gargoyle and says, “I’ve decided it’s time for something new…”

The “something new” is—taa daa!—no trunks! And no color! His costume is now all black and sans trunks… and gloves and boots. Yep, a unitard. The key here is that Jones has him in such a crouch in the drawing that you cannot immediately glean the changes, as if they were… embarrassed by them.

Thankfully, I can report here that the trunks, like the cat, came back. But, regrettably, just a few months ago, they went away… again. Yes, we are now in “New Trunk-less Look II” or some such in the Batman comics and the universe is a weeping basket case. Or at least us old school fans are.

See, there’s a lot of junk in those there Bat-trunks, and not all of it is bad.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/a-brief-history-of-batmans-trunks/feed/10Big Screen Batman: Batman Beginshttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-batman-begins/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-batman-begins/#commentsFri, 04 Feb 2011 15:27:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-batman-begins/After the Batman & Robin fiasco, there were several abortive attempts to continue the franchise, with many different writers and directors attached, and as many rumors about casting as there are actors in Hollywood (the only certainty being neither Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, nor George Clooney would return as Batman). The nadir of the rumors […]]]>

After the Batman & Robin fiasco, there were several abortive attempts to continue the franchise, with many different writers and directors attached, and as many rumors about casting as there are actors in Hollywood (the only certainty being neither Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, nor George Clooney would return as Batman). The nadir of the rumors were the point at which Howard Stern was seriously discussed as a contender to play the Scarecrow; there were enough jokes in the media and in the industry about that that the project ended up fizzling out, and for several years it appeared as though Batman & Robin would kill the franchise permanently.

Then, in 2003, it was announced that Christopher Nolan, the critically acclaimed director of Memento and Insomnia, would be directing a new Batman movie. It was a curious choice; Nolan’s work (including his first, little seen experimental feature Following) had been characterized, to that point, by an extremely literary and cerebral quality. More than any director attached to the series (with the possible exception of Darren Aronofsky, whose Batman feature was never made), Nolan approached his pictures from a strongly character-based, psychological angle, portending interesting new things for the “rebooted” Batman series.

In summer 2005, Nolan, working from a script he co-wrote with David S. Goyer, released Batman Begins. More than any Batman movie yet released, Batman Begins had a literary respect for Batman as a character and the comics in general. It was certainly, to date, the most serious Batman movie, with none of the residual influence of the TV show (either thankfully or regretfully, depending on one’s perspective).

It also is the first movie to give Batman an origin story. In its first act, Batman Begins traces Bruce Wayne from childhood, where he falls into a well and is attacked by bats, to his parents’ murder at the hands of a street criminal, to his aimless anger as a young man (Christian Bale), where he finds himself imprisoned in Asia. There he’s approached by a man named Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), representing Ra’s Al Ghul (who Liam Neeson claims is Ken Watanabe), and invited to join an international group of assassins. After his revenge against his parents’ murder is foiled by Gotham’s leading gangster, Bruce returns to train with Ducard and Ra’s Al Ghul, only to have second thoughts when he discovers that their plan for him is to help them destroy the “irredeemable” Gotham City. Bruce decides to, and returns home, adopting the persona of Batman, to do what he can to protect Gotham from evil.

The script takes a very nuanced approach to that question, showing several separate types of perfidy: the aforementioned Ducard/Al Ghul League of Shadows, the Mob, led by Tom Wilkinson’s Carmine Falcone, and independent operator, Cilian Murphy’s Dr. Stephen Crane, alias The Scarecrow, who uses experimental psychoactive drugs to induce hallucinations and drive his foes insane. As this is a Batman movie, it’s not really a spoiler to say that Batman eventually prevails, ending the movie a hero to the public; the villain for the next movie is revealed to most likely be a criminal leaving Joker playing cards at crime scenes.

Batman Begins, while not without its flaws, corrects some of the major missteps of the previous movies. One goal shared by both Nolan and Bale in taking on the character of Batman was to not let him be overwhelmed by the villains; this had not been done since the TV show and 1966 movie, which is to say it had never happened in a Batman movie that was even remotely serious in intent. By examining Bruce Wayne’s decision to become Batman, he becomes much more three-dimensional than he had been before. In the previous movies, it was taken as a given: “Okay, you know who Bruce Wayne is, you know he’s Batman, now look at all this cool stuff and flamboyant villains.” The choice, in Batman Begins, to pit Batman against less well-known villains (Ra’s Al Ghul, Scarecrow, quotidian Mafiosi) strengthens the focus on Bruce Wayne/Batman by making him the most familiar entity to casual comics fans and civilians.

The supporting cast is, almost uniformly, outstanding, with Bruce Wayne’s two closest confidants being Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. You are simply not going to lose when you have Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman on your side. The villains all acquit themselves well, if slightly briefly in Watanabe’s case. The only weak link is, as nearly every other critic and most of the audience pointed out back in ’05, Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. She’s not terrible, and part of it is that the character is a bit perfunctorily drawn, but she nonetheless suffers in comparison to the rest of the cast, which features among other wonders a restrained and measured performance by Gary Oldman, for whom such a thing is a major stretch.

The faults in Batman Begins are minor, considering what it gets right. The action scenes are not very well done. Nolan had never directed an action picture of this magnitude, and was clearly learning on the job. The length, also, can be problematic depending on how interesting one finds the very protracted first act, and how the top-heaviness of the narrative means the parts where Bruce Wayne finally is Batman can seem slightly rushed.

As a reboot, Batman Begins basically returns the audience (and franchise) to the command line. With Batman once more Batman, and (miraculously) one we could take seriously, the next move was anyone’s guess. All we could derive from the ending was that the villain in the next movie would be the Joker. Who could possibly compare to Jack Nicholson in the role? Next, in the final review in this series, we will find out, as we examine The Dark Knight.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/big-screen-batman-batman-begins/feed/16The History of the Bat-Manhttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/the-history-of-the-bat-man/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/the-history-of-the-bat-man/#commentsFri, 04 Feb 2011 14:09:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/04/the-history-of-the-bat-man/
For more than seven decades, Batman has remained an iconic character in the DC comic book universe, encompassing comic books, video games, toys, films and television shows. When The Dark Knight was released in 2008, it became one of the most popular films ever recorded, and popularity of the character has never been higher. Yet, the character that we know today as Batman has undergone major changes throughout his life in print, with periods of wild popularity and steep challenges since his first appearance in 1939.

Part One: Origin Stories

Over the course of the 1930s, the popularity of comic strips rose, fueled by a national appetite for crime, sex and violence in the highly visual stories. In 1934, a man named Max Charlie Gaines found work with Eastern Color Printing, which had been printing comics in newspapers since the late 1920s. He realized that the printing machines could churn out dedicated pamphlets that could be sold on their own. The comic book was born. He, along with fellow pioneer Jack Leibowitz, founded All-American Publications, which helped to set the standard for what we think of comic books today. Leibowitz, in addition to founding All-American Publications, also helped to found National Allied Publications, a company that would help shape the comic book industry at its core. Over the next couple of years, comic books encompassed stories of nearly every genre, and exploded in popularity while often running afoul of local censors, who sought to eliminate indecent content from the public.

The game changed when two friends, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster entered the scene. Graduating from Glenville High School in 1934, they entered the art industry, working at various jobs before creating several incarnations of Superman before publishing their first stories with the iconic superhero in Action Comics#1 in June of 1938.

Numerous comic book lines were put together throughout the thirties. Detective Comics was an imprint put together by Vin Sullivan under National Allied Publications in 1937, an anthology of sorts of various comic book stories within a single genre. Following the success of Detective Comics, Sullivan put together Action Comics, with the intention of a release in 1938. At the same time, Siegel and Shuster’s character caught the eyes of Action Comic’s editors, and Superman was put into the first issue. For a check for $130, the pair signed away their rights to Superman.

Superman became a growing success in America, doubling sales for the books. Gaines, thrilled with the profitability of the character, gave the character his own book in 1939. Comics were big, and the public demanded more.

With the successes of Superman in 1938, Vin Sullivan began looking for a follow-up hero to fill the cover for his Detective Comics line. While looking, he went to up and comic book artist Bob Kane in 1939, looking for a new hero to fill the appetites of the public. Kane went and collaborated with Bill Finger, a comic book writer to create a new hero. Early versions of this character saw a small mask, red tights and a pair of wings. Collaborating with Finger, the character changed to include a cowl rather than a mask, with a cape and a black and grey outfit, rather than red, with a bat symbol on his chest. The Bat-Man was born.

Drawing on the influence of characters such as Zorro, Sherlock Holmes and Doc Savage, Kane had worked on various designs and doodles throughout the 1930s. The request from National Publications was his first big break. The comic was approved for a monthly feature, and Kane was able to negotiate a deal that allowed him to retain credit and control over the character. While he did this, he left Bill Finger out of the deal, who would work on the comic for years without credit, in addition to the other numerous ghost writers who contributed to the project.

In the May of 1939, Detective Comics #27 was released with the words: “In this issue: The Unique and Amazing Adventures of the Batman!”, featuring Kane and Finger’s creation swooping across the cover, pulling a villain into the air while two shady men watched from the foreground, one of them brandishing a gun. The book was a success, and more stories were ordered for the character. It sold for ten cents.

The fabled origin story for Batman came later that year, in November, with Detective Comics #33. Socialite Bruce Wayne, traumatized by the murder of his parents as a child, dons the symbolic mask and persona and vows to destroy the criminal underclass. Batman provided the ultimate balance to the invulnerable Superman character. As Gerard Jones noted in his history, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, that “Bill Finger was the first to bring a novelist’s questions to bear on a superhero. Why would a man choose such a life?” Batman was a character that outgrew his status as a knockoff of the Man of Steel, eventually becoming something far greater.

Part Two: The Golden Years

Following their explosive debut in the 1930s, comic books became all the rage for young kids throughout America. Success stories such as Superman began a craze in superheroes, with Batman created just a year after, in 1939, by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Batman became a rapid success on newsstands, and brought something new and exciting to the infant superhero genre. The popularity of the Caped Crusader grew from the character’s launch in Detective Comics #27 in May of 1939, and as the demand for more pages increased, Kane hired on additional artists and writers to help. One writer, Jerry Robinson, began with the third issue and incorporated further cultural influences into the comic strip: German Expressionism and the work of filmmaker Fritz Lang. Robinson also invented one of Batman’s iconic villains, the Joker, as well as his sidekick, Robin. The character’s popularity continued to soar, and by 1940 Batman had his own comic.

Alongside Superman, Batman was one of the cornerstones of National Comics with Action Comics and Detective Comics. The first Batman title was not only remarkable for introducing us to two iconic villains in Catwoman and the Joker, but also because it resulted in the Dark Knight’s trademark “no gun” rule: in subsequent issues, Batman refuses to kill or use firearms, and the overall tone of the comic softened somewhat. Over the course of the Second World War, new familiar characters and features were created, including The Scarecrow, The Penguin, Harvey Dent, and the Batmobile, amongst others. In 1952, Batman even teamed up with Superman for the first time, in Superman #76.

The post-war years, however, were not good for the comic book industry. Writers and artists, who had essentially been given free reign over their content in the early years (with sex and violence, as it does now, helping to shift comics off the shelves and into readers’ hands), came under more intense scrutiny than they ever had before. Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent helped to carry a tide of criticism against the industry in 1954, leading to Congressional hearings over the conduct of the industry.

In particular, Wertham targeted National/DC Comics flagship superheroes: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, insisting that the Batman character in particular was represented as engaging in a homoerotic relationship with his protégé, Robin. Wertham attacked this relationship, along with other elements that he saw as being unfit for kids, arguing that such material would lead to a generation of psychologically damaged children. What he ignored was the value of true artistic expression that comic book creators put out through their works.

However misguided Wertham’s motives and “research,” he helped to solidify opposition to the industry in the heart of the American public. In light of such opposition, comic book creators organized into a self-regulating trade organization in 1954, calling themselves the Comics Magazine Association of America, where they opted to adopt a code of standards for each comic that members produced: the strictly-enforced Comics Code Authority. Amongst some of the provisions adopted by the CMAA was that governmental officials were never to be portrayed in an unflattering light, no explicit crimes, violence or other questionable materials would be used, and the words “terror” and “horror” could not be used in comic book titles. At the same time, zombies, vampires, werewolves and other assorted supernatural and horror-related beings were banned entirely.

The result was drastic. Two years later, the industry shrunk to half of what it was just a couple of years prior. In this environment, the Batman comics were significantly altered in their tone and style in light of the restrictions placed upon the character. Science fiction was added in as an element, and the creators diversified the Caped Crusader a bit going into the 1960s, when Batman became a member of the Justice League of America.

1964 saw falling sales for the character, and there were plans to kill off Bruce Wayne and his alter ego altogether, when a new editor came in: Julius Schwartz, who unleashed a series of major changes. From Detective Comics #327 in May of 1964, a new artist, Carmine Infantino overhauled the character, giving the Batman a new, contemporary look as Bob Kane eased his way out.

1966 brought in a television show, increasing the popularity of the character. The series, with a playful sense of camp, came to the airwaves following the popularity of similar shows, such as The Amazing Adventures of Superman. Running for three seasons and a hundred and twenty episodes, actors Adam West and Burt Ward portrayed the Caped Crusader and his sidekick, Robin as they aided the Gotham City police and mayor against super-villains twice a week. As the initial rush of Bat-mania faded and ratings declined, ABC decide to cancel the show, and while rival network NBC offered to pick it up, the sets had been torn down and plans for a revival were scrapped. Furthermore, though the comics had been boosted by the television show, sales went into decline after its cancellation.

With the cancellation of the series, writers worked to distance themselves from the lighthearted nature of the show, going back to the roots of the character as originally envisioned by its creators. Throughout the 1970s, Batman became a darker figure once again, but the comic sales continued to decline. During this period, Batman co-creator Bill Finger passed away. Finger, who had crafted Kane’s original ideas into the character that we know today has never officially been recognized as a co-creator of the character, due to the contracts that Kane had signed in the 1930s. Twenty years after his death, in 1994, he was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame five years later, finally gaining some measure of recognition for his accomplishments.

In spite of the darker image and grittier storylines, by 1985, Batman sales hit an all-time low, but that was all about to change….

Part Three: Resurgence and Hollywood

In 1986, sales of Batman were reinvigorated with the introduction of Frank Miller’s limited series, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, a successful comic run that saw a resurgence of interest in the character, and which remains a cornerstone of the character’s mythology.

Miller stayed on with the comic for the next couple of years, writing Batman: Year One, in 1987, while comic book author Alan Moore brought out Batman: The Killing Joke, one of the most influential Batman comics to date in 1988. The dark run of stories fit with Kane’s character, and the commercial success helped to influence the creation of a film adaptation.

In 1989, director Tim Burton memorably adapted the character to film in Batman. The movie, heavily advertised and merchandised, went on to become a major hit, starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Burton’s Batman would go on to gross hundreds of millions after a summer of intense merchandising and broken box office records, and the success of the film sparked a resurgence of interest in Batman comics and the comic book industry as a whole.

Burton followed up with Batman Returns in 1992; Keaton returned to portray the title character, with Danny DeVito starring as The Penguin, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. The film, which was considered darker than the original, was successful, though not to the same degree as its predecessor. At the same time in 1992, a new television show, Batman: The Animated Series, received both popular and critical applause, running through 1995.

Desiring a more family-friendly adventure with the Caped Crusader, Warner Brothers went in a new direction in 1995, bringing on Joel Schumacher to direct the third motion picture film, Batman Forever. Val Kilmer was brought in as Batman, while Tommy Lee Jones took on the role of Two-Face, and with Jim Carrey as The Riddler. Chris O’Donnell starred as Dick Grayson, aka, Robin. While the film was considered a financial success, it lacked the critical appeal that distinguished the first two films. Nevertheless, a sequel was commissioned right away, with Joel Schumacher returning in the director’s spot.

Released in 1997, Batman & Robin starred George Clooney as the titular character, with Chris O’Donnell reprising his role as Robin, and with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy and Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. With its release, Batman & Robin was critically panned and underperformed at the box office, and a fifth film, Batman Triumphant, was cancelled. Just a year later, Bob Kane passed away in 1998, and Vin Sullivan, who gave Superman and Batman their start in the 1930s, died in 1999.

In 2005, Warner Brothers decided to reboot the Batman film franchise, bringing on director Christopher Nolan to create a cinematic origin story for the Caped Crusader. Nolan’s Batman Begins hit theaters, with a realistic and dark tone inspired by the 1980s comics, helping to reinvigorating the franchise. Actor Christian Bale stepped up to take on the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, with Liam Neeson as Ra’s Al Ghul and Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow.

Batman Begins was a critical and financial success, and sparked a sequel in 2008, when Nolan followed up with The Dark Knight, one of the most successful films ever to be released. Bale returned as Batman, with actor Heath Ledger taking on the role of The Joker, and Aaron Eckhart becoming Harvey Dent/Two Face. Following the completion of filming, Ledger died of an accidental overdose, prompting a flurry of publicity and additional interest in the film, which received eight Academy Award nominations, eventually walking away with Best Supporting Actor (for Ledger) and Best Sound Editing. The character will return to theaters in 2012 with Nolan’s much-anticipated The Dark Knight Returns.

The history of Batman is an fascinating one, one that has impacted all facets of the comic book industry and American popular culture while entertaining millions of fans around the world. Batman became a character that outgrew his originally intended role as an imitation Superman, becoming a true icon of the superhero genre in his own right. The Caped Crusader has more than earned his iconic status, fighting his way through the crowded world of comics and all the drastic highs and lows that have characterized the 72 years since his creation. Clearly, the story of Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego is here to stay, represented and retold in myriad forms and media, from the merchandising brought on by the films to the comic books that have remained in print for over seven decades. Undoubtedly, we will see far more from Batman in the coming years as he continues in his role as The Dark Knight, waiting to fight crime when Gotham City is in of most need of him.

Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer, historian and longtime science fiction fan. He currently holds a master’s degree in Military History from Norwich University, and has written for SF Signal and io9, as well as for his personal site, Worlds in a Grain of Sand. He currently lives in the green (or white, for most of the year) mountains of Vermont with a growing library of books and a girlfriend who tolerates them.

Every good hero needs a theme song, and they’ve all had their moments in the melodic sunlight. The Spider-Man tune has been known to induce headbopping and undoubtedly inspired Homer Simpson, and the John Williams Superman movie theme certainly makes my heart skip a couple beats when I hear it. But out of all our super friends it seems that no one has inspired more music (or musicians, for that matter) than the caped crusader. It may be campy, or pop-flavored, or just plain epic—however you cut it, Batman has more melodies to make him up than any superhero I can recall.

We’re all familiar with the 60s surfer-rock inspired theme from the Adam West television show, but what amazes me is how many legitimate bands have covered or riffed on this terrifyingly catchy two minute jam. From The Kinks to The Flaming Lips to The Who to Eminem, there is bound to be at least one version out there that suits your tastes. Prince and R.E.M. both adapted the number for film, but it was The Artist Formerly Known As alone who actually made the final cut with the unforgettable “Batdance.”

If you haven’t seen this music video, I highly recommend you click on it. It will change your life.

The 60s Batman TV show had its share of musical guest artists, including one memorable episode where Catwoman stole the voices of two rising stars of Great Britain: Chad and Jeremy. Sadly, all the attention Julie Newmar paid them couldn’t bring them transatlantic fame. Paul Revere & the Raiders also had a spot, campaigning for the Pegnuin when he ran for Mayor. Real powerhouse pop stars were keen to get in on the first Tim Burton film: Prince got the honors, but originally Michael Jackson was going to write music for it as well, until Burton chewed out the studio for trying to make him too commercial. Mind you, this is after Jackson reportedly asked if he could play the Joker… Just, just try and picture that. You know what, nevermind, please don’t.

The score that Danny Elfman provided for Burton’s films earned him his stripes as a new composer-to-be-reckoned-with in Hollywood, so much so that some of the old guard decided to insinuate that he couldn’t have written it, given his background. Elfman wrote them a kind letter in return. (Worth a read, if you have a moment, though there’s some decidedly rude words in it. Whenever I explain my love of Elfman, I usually cite this letter.) Despite what the nay-sayers may have implied, Danny Elfman’s signature cannot be mistaken in the Burton scores.

What’s more, there was something so right about the match; a man who had fronted a rock band previously known as The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (I’d like the see Prince top that one) learning that he had his own alter ego to nurture as a composer. The soundtrack did more than underscore action, it took us to Gotham. The theme became an instant classic, to the point where an altered version was used for the season one opening credits of Batman: The Animated Series. It remained that way until they changed the show to The Adventures of Batman and Robin and had Shirley Walker compose a new, more lighthearted theme.

The Schumacher films, while lacking in decent scripting or any character development (among many other things) did have two very nice scores, penned by Elliot Goldenthal. While they didn’t have the early flare and sheer uniqueness Elfman brought to the table or Zimmer and Howard’s later determination to try something completely new, Goldenthal’s themes were one of the highest points of the Schumacher era, attempting to add some emotional impact and complexity (even when there was none to be had) and frequently defibrillating the films back from the brink of cardiac arrest. Hans Zimmer actually said that he felt those scores had been overlooked; in fact, those soundtracks did as well commercially as Prince’s Batman album had when it was released. I mean, let’s face it, with track names like “Fledermausmarschmusik” and “Batterdammerung,” how could your score be anything but ironically awesome?

There was no Bat Musik to be had for several years until Chris Nolan got his hands on the wunderteam of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for his Batman reboot. Interested in going a different route than anyone before them, Zimmer and Howard made the choice to embrace the dualities of Bruce Wayne’s character within the music. This led to a blend of classic orchestral scoring along with certain eletronic elements, the intention being to mirror Batman’s reliance and trust in technology. They took it a step further, applying that method of thinking in how they scored Bruce’s grief as a child over the death of his parents, resulting in a repetative voice, caught in a cycle of mourning and broken beyond repair. The score wasn’t concerned with epics and heroism, but instead busied itself with the person we all wanted to get to know better—the man who spends his free time in a bat cave. The results were innovative and effective; some may say the scores for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are the best we’ve had, and while it’s not an argument that is likely to end soon, there’s no shame in being appropriately impressed.

So there’s your Bat Musik breakdown. That’s a lot of music for one guy in a cape, but why? One could argue that it’s merely because of how often Batman gets reinvented for the screen, and you’d have a point, but I believe there has to be something more to it than that. Batman has a way of capturing people’s imaginations that goes far beyond your typical superhero infatuation. There is something too amusing about the fact that all of this music seems to fit together in a bizzare patchwork, just a way of showcasing new aspects of our knight and the city he has committed himself to for life. I am counting on plenty of Batman music in our future, and who knows what we could end up with?

Hopefully nothing as catchy as the little diddy I planted in your head earlier. BATMAN! Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da….

Emily Asher-Perrin always wanted to dress up as Poison Ivy for Halloween, but has yet to do so. She’s one of those people who writes for websites and tweets in her spare time.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/a-little-dark-knight-music-batman-through-soundtrack-and-song/feed/8The Batman as Anti-Vampirehttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/the-batman-as-anti-vampire/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/the-batman-as-anti-vampire/#commentsThu, 03 Feb 2011 22:01:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/the-batman-as-anti-vampire/Back when I was eleven or twelve, I had a crush on Batman. The Batman of my fantasies was, more or less, Adam West’s Batman from the campy sixties TV show. In my fantasies, however, as in the show, Batman was quite solemn as he climbed up buildings in his pleather mask and tights. He […]]]>

Back when I was eleven or twelve, I had a crush on Batman. The Batman of my fantasies was, more or less, Adam West’s Batman from the campy sixties TV show. In my fantasies, however, as in the show, Batman was quite solemn as he climbed up buildings in his pleather mask and tights. He was equally grave in his public persona of Bruce Wayne, millionaire (or was it billionaire?) playboy.

In an era where the word “playboy” evoked thoughts of swinging bachelorhood, Bruce Wayne seemed unusually ascetic. I seem to remember Adam West always looking vaguely uncomfortable as a fake-lashed debutante melted into him. Like the professor in Gilligan’s Island, Bruce Wayne seemed to be provoke lust in women without showing much evidence of experiencing it himself.

Yet in his Batman disguise, another side of Bruce emerged. When one of the many incarnations of Catwoman battled him, there was always a glimmer of something carnal behind the eye slits of that black pleather mask. Of course, the Catwomen were something to behold. Whether it was Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar or that other one I wasn’t as fond of, the catwomen were always wasp-waisted and bullet-breasted, girded for the kind of battle that usually takes place in high-priced dungeons. As for Robin, the boy wonder, his idol worship of the big man did seem a little suspect. A more sophisticated viewer might have wondered if Batman were capable of juggling a bird and a cat.

Not that I thought about this when I was in the sixth or seventh grade, of course. At least, I didn’t know it consciously. Yet when I went to sleep, I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be tied up—Batman was always tying Catwoman up—and at the mercy of a man who would look at you, enigmatic behind the mask, and say something that sounded deep and dry and tinged with the subtlest traces of humor.

Unlike most girls my age, I also read Batman comics. He was not my favorite, not by a long shot, but I did like his dark city of Gotham, and I respected the fact that he had no superpowers, just his native brilliance and his nifty inventions. In the world of superheroes, there have always been the superpowered, like Superman and Wonder Woman, and the uncannily gifted but normal, like Batman and Shanna the She-Devil (a feminist jungle queen from the early seventies). I always preferred the latter.

Years later, when I worked at DC Comics, it occurred to me that in all his many reinventions, no one had ever taken Batman and made him into a romantic hero. Writers like Denny O’Neal and Alan Moore and Frank Miller all gave Batman grit and edge and emphasized his haunted, shadowed soul, and the movies mostly followed suit. You would have thought there were only two choices for Batman: camp or angst.

Yet any romance reader could see there is another way. Brooding, brilliant, detached and obsessive, Batman is the anti-vampire. A vampire must struggle to control his blood lust; Batman would need the right kind of woman to unleash the sensual creature behind the mask.

Maybe it’s time to let a woman have a crack at the Batman.

Alisa Kwitney has written some half a dozen novels, two coffee table books, and assorted comics and graphic novels. She was an editor at DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint for seven years, working on titles such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and shepherding other dark fantasy books. Her latest releases include paranormal romance Moon Burn and young adult graphic novel Token.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/the-batman-as-anti-vampire/feed/7Big Screen Batman: Batman & Robinhttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-a-robin/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-a-robin/#commentsThu, 03 Feb 2011 19:39:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-a-robin/It is very hard to find anything to say about Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher’s second Batman movie, other than that it is bad. It owes its entire existence to commerce, greenlit upon the success of Batman Forever and rushed to completion at the earliest possible date, ultimately functioning more as a $125 million advertisement […]]]>

It is very hard to find anything to say about Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher’s second Batman movie, other than that it is bad. It owes its entire existence to commerce, greenlit upon the success of Batman Forever and rushed to completion at the earliest possible date, ultimately functioning more as a $125 million advertisement for toys than a movie.

It requires benefit of the doubt to even be called a movie, rather than a two-hour display of noise and flashing lights. The biggest flaw, the fatal one, is that Batman & Robin set out deliberately to be camp (without a steady grasp on what the term actually means), with Schumacher informing his cast via bullhorn, “We’re making a cartoon!”

Ironically, Schumacher is a bad enough director that in attempting to make a camp classic, he failed miserably, ending up with a loud, bizarrely dreary, stupid mess; if he’d tried to sincerely make the best movie he possibly could, he may very well have ended up with a camp classic.

Even exerting the energy to call Batman & Robin bad is offensive. It is constructed, artlessly and methodically, as “a Batman movie,” down to the self-defeating strategy—shared with Tim Burton’s Batman—of having the villain be billed above the hero. Not to be overly simplistic here, but the movie has the word “Batman” in the title. He should be the most important guy in the movie. But Arnold Schwarzenegger had it in his contract that he get top billing (as well as his $25 million salary) to play Mr. Freeze. Why? Why Mr. Freeze, not even an interesting villain? Why Arnold Schwarzenegger? The exact details are unknown, but Patrick Stewart had been cast as Mr. Freeze until one day Joel Schumacher decided he had to have Arnold. Joel Schumacher’s mind is an inscrutable, unknowable thing.

Allegedly, there’s a story buried somewhere in all the cacophonous nonsense, involving a fictional disease that killed Arnold’s wife, motivating him to become Mr. Freeze and turn to a life of low-temperature crime. Some sinister mad scientist turns Uma Thurman into Poison Ivy just because he’s evil, but she kills him. Batman and Robin meet Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone, written in solely due to having had a couple hits at the time the script was being written) and join forces. The collective might of our daring protagonists proves too much for Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy to handle, and they end up getting chucked into Arkham Asylum, but not before Mr. Freeze gives them the cure to the fictional disease out of remorse or something so Alfred doesn’t have to die. Batgirl comes to stay at Wayne Manor. The end.

Repeating how bad Batman & Robin is would be beating a dead horse at this point. Suffice to say, Joel Schumacher publicly apologized for the movie, George Clooney—at the time known best for TV’s ER and trying to break into movies—has been half-joking for years about the fact that the first line of his obituary would read “played Batman.” Of all the actors cast, to that point, as Batman Clooney would easily be the most capable of handling both Batman and Bruce Wayne (a balance neither Keaton nor Kilmer found easy), if he only had a remotely competent movie in which to play the dual role. Instead, he looks a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of how terrible the movie is; in some scenes he looks like he’s just trying to survive the experience.

Although the movie didn’t lose money, Batman & Robin was nonetheless enough of an embarassment that it ended Schumacher’s reign as an A-list director and delayed Clooney’s ascent to movie stardom. More importantly for this discussion, it nearly killed the entire Batman movie franchise. It would take a few years and the advent of the concept of “rebooting” a movie franchise before a new cinematic take on Batman came along. It, most certainly, would be different.

Next, how Christopher Nolan resurrected Batman with a new origin story, in 2005’s Batman Begins.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-a-robin/feed/18Holy Villainy! The Top Ten Silliest Arch-Nemeses from 1960’s Batmanhttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/holy-villainy-the-top-ten-silliest-arch-nemeses-from-1960s-batman/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/holy-villainy-the-top-ten-silliest-arch-nemeses-from-1960s-batman/#commentsThu, 03 Feb 2011 19:06:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/holy-villainy-the-top-ten-silliest-arch-nemeses-from-1960s-batman/Despite memorable appearance from the Joker (Caesar Romero) The Penguin (Burgess Meredith) The Riddler (Frank Gorshin) and three Catwomen (Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, and Julie Newmar), the 1960’s Batman TV series featured a bevy of bizarre baddies you might not remember. If you blinked, you might have missed scores of seldom-seen salacious schemers! Readers beware: below is not for the faint of heart, for after the jump, the ten most audacious and absurd antagonists are yet to come!

10. Marsha, Queen of Diamonds (Carolyn Jones)

Though called the Queen of Diamonds; Marsha was really more like an urban witch with the ability to put people under spells using potions and special darts. In her debut appearance she uses one of her mind-altering concoctions on Batman and nearly succeeds at becoming his wife! Of all the cliff-hangers in the TV show, this is the only instance where a member of the dynamic duo is not facing a life-threatening dilemma. Instead, the notion of marriage serves as the “exciting” quandary. Apparently if The Queen of Diamonds marries Batman, it will give her complete and legal access to the Batcave. Holy matrimony! Why didn’t the Penguin ever think of that?

9. The Clock King (Walter Slezak)

One of my favorite things about the 60s Batman show was the ability to watch most episodes in any order. This narrative trick was made possible when Commissioner Gordon got on that red phone and told Batman that some bad guy was “back” or “up to their old tricks.” But this statement was particularly strange when said villain was only featured in one story! At the beginning of The Clock King’s only appearance on the show, he is so totally “back.” As children, this disappointed my sister and I. Despite watching what we thought were ALL the episodes of the show, we never saw the “first” episode with the Clock King. I suppose it’s appropriate that a villain interested in time itself wouldn’t have any true linear origin. So, what were the Clock-King’s special crime-making techniques you ask? Time-bombs. Duh.

8. Ma Parker and the Parker Gang (Shelley Winters)

Having the notoriety of possessing the most ammunition of 60’s Gotham City criminals, Ma Parker was an obvious homage to the real-life mobster Kate “Ma” Barker. And just like her real-world counterpart, Ma Parker was surrounded by a whole family of gangsters. With names like Pretty Boy Parker, Mad Dog Parker, Machine Gun Parker, and of course her daughter, Legs Parker, Ma and her brood were more ridiculous than they were formidable. Still, you have to respect a gangster lady with exploding hairpins.

7. Shame (Cliff Robertson)

Shame is a bad cowboy. He robs trains. He talks like a cowboy. He employs henchpersons with names like Calamity Jan, and Chief Standing Pat. Of all the terrible ethnic stereotypes in 60’s television, Shame might be the most subversive, as he officially made being a slow-talking, western white guy totally uncool and outdated. I mean who needs six-shooters when you’ve got the bat-laser? I know for a fact that this yahoo put my sister off westerns for years until Back to The Future III came out.

6. False Face (????WHO KNOWS???)

Actually he was played by a guy named Malachi Thorne, but in the opening credits False Face was always being played by “?”. As a child, I believed whole-heartedly that the people filming the show genuinely didn’t know who this guy was. The other great thing I remember about False Face from my childhood was that I found him particularly terrifying. It’s almost like David Lynch was taking note when this guy showed up. In any case, when a master of disguise is un-masked, only to reveal another mask, cheesy brilliance ensues.

5. Louie the Lilac (Milton Berle)

There’s really nothing I love more than over-the-top 1920’s mobster-speak. Usually life is even better when said mobster-speak occurs on a show which doesn’t normally feature mobsters. The only competition Louie the Lilac has in this particular department might be all the mobsters from 60’s Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action.” But Louie is right up there. Not to mention, if someone is going to have a trick lapel, it should be a guy named “The Lilac” and not The Joker. Louie’s appearances on the show were limited, but there is a particularly memorable scene in one of his exploits in which he tries to feed Batgirl to a man-eating plant. Sorry. I meant to say he feeds her to a Batgirl-eating plant.

4. Egghead (Vincent Price)

Okay, forget his egg-cellent voice over at the end of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Vincent Price should truly be remembered for his role as the villainous Egghead. Why was he called Egghead? Because he was bald, I think. Why did he say things like “egg-citing” and “egg-static”? Because his name was Egghead. This was basically the entire character. I can just imagine the writer’s room on the 60’s Batman when they came up with this one. “So he’ll be bald and make a bunch of egg-puns.” And if that wasn’t enough, one of his episodes featured a golden egg. It’s hard to believe as I write this that I’m not making this stuff up.

3. Lord Ffogg & Lady Peasoup (Rudy Vallee & Glynis Johns)

As a child the three-part episode featuring Lord Ffogg & Lady Peasoup was hands-down my favorite. There was something epic about this particular story. If you’re not sure Lord Ffogg and Lady Peasoup weren’t hardcore, consider this: Batman and Robin relocated all the way to Londinium to stop them! What did Lord Ffogg really do? Well he harrumphed a bit and had a pretty sweet pipe which emitted the trade mark green-Batman gas. His sister, Lady Peasoup, appeared to be nice to everyone, but actually wasn’t nice at all. Now, no other villains were granted a three-part episode, much less one that also featured Batgirl, so I guess we’ve just go to assume there’s something really scary and badass about Ffogg’s velvet nightgown, and even scarier about his sister’s accent.

2. King Tut (Victor Buono)

Now I am in no way in favor of the death penalty, but if there’s one place that might want to consider offing a few felons, it’s Gotham City. Most of these guys end up getting let out of prison on good behavior, only to get picked up by Catwoman and immediately start wreaking havoc. With King Tut, the writers took this conceit one absurd step further. King Tut is actually a nice guy named William Omaha Mackelroy who teaches Egyptology at Yale University. (Yep, that’s right. They can use the name of a real university, but when they went to England it was the antiquated term “Londinium.”) Anyway, when the Professor gets hit on the head with a book or a misplaced vase, he turns into the evil and criminal-minded King Tut. Invariably, at the end of every King Tut story, when he transform back into the Professor, those geniuses with the Gotham police department allow him go back to teaching. Okay, fair enough, but maybe it might be a good idea to force him to wear a helmet all the time now.

1. Chandell/ Harry (Liberace)

So, just in case there weren’t enough plots in the 1960’s Batman involving false marriages, famous guest-star Liberace serves up a doozie. It seems famed musician Chandell had turned to a life of crime after being blackmailed by his twin brother Harry. His plot involves killing both Bruce and Dick, marrying Aunt Harriet, and using the money to pay off his criminal debts. He also sings. Purportedly, Liberace supplied his own pianos and gaudy outfits for this episode. Also, Liberace’s portrayal of both these baddies earns him the number one spot for another legendary reason. This episode was the highest rated episode of the 1960’s Batman during its entire run. Let’s be serious, the only other person who could pull that off would be a time-traveling Lady Gaga guest starring as herself.

Now don’t think I forgot about the Minstrel, The Mad-Hatter, Zelda the Great, Colonel Gumm, and the rest of them. But holy blog lists, readers! I only had ten!

Ryan Britt’s writing has been published with Clarkesworld Magazine, Opium Magazine, Nerve.com and elsewhere. He is keenly aware of how many Batman actors later showed up on Buck Rogers.

Although there are many highlights in what is consistently an entertaining show, the season two’s “Pop Goes The Joker” is without a doubt my favorite moment in Adam West-era Batman. As a kid, anything about art interested me… and in the post-Batman Returns fever of the early nineties, anything involving Batman was even better.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the show, however little I realized it at the time, was the lighthearted glimpse it offered us into the 1960s. For all of its camp and saccharine dialogue, the series has always existed for me as an artifact of a time and place that I have only ever known through books or television.??

Although one should really watch the episode to fully understand its brilliance (and I’m not using that word sarcastically), the basic plot involves the Joker’s seemingly accidental infiltration of Gotham’s high stakes gallery scene after vandalizing the work of another artist. While the Joker launches cartoonish paint from a spray gun across a room full of canvases (only to receive praise and accolades as a new, fresh voice in contemporary art moments later), we’ve already had the pleasure of meeting an avaricious gallery owner and the established artist who’s about to bear the fruit of the Joker’s iconoclasm.

Complete with accents and attitudes appropriate to those completely removed from every day life, both the artist and dealer are beautiful caricatures of high brow aristocrats. I can imagine what 1960s middle class America might have thought of these two hucksters, and doubt we’re not supposed to feel any empathy for them either. And who doesn’t love watching the entitled get screwed? In fact this entire episode is characterized by a general lack of empathy for the Joker’s victims, with the level of awesome seeming to vary inversely with the amount of respect these wealthy chumps are afforded.

?I mention these seemingly inconsequential inflections only to express how biting the details really are. For a show that can appear naive in many ways, its scathing parody of the art world feels surprisingly nuanced and well-informed—which isn’t to say that any of the particulars are even remotely accurate, but they do taste of attitudes and truths that belie a desire on behalf of the writers to play along a little at being jesters themselves. Although the Joker certainly helps direct the plot, he seems as dedicated to thrilling the audience as antagonizing Batman.

The Joker’s debut culminates in an art contest (naturally), where we’re provided with another precious glimpse through the looking glass into Gotham City’s art establishment. Paint is sloshed around in that rather unrestrained way typical to any parody of abstract painting. Complete with a monkey hurling pigment and a sufficiently incomprehensible collection of methods and media, the Joker’s opponents are inevitably outdone by his own blank canvas, which he fawns and philosophizes over in a manner sufficient to drive home the point that this is indeed a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes—and we the audience have once again been invited along to laugh at the joke.

Like the simpering gallery owner from earlier, Gotham City’s elite art patrons are introduced with such abject contempt that we can’t help but applaud the Joker for taking advantage of their decadence and stupidity. And if that isn’t enough, he promptly opens an art school for them, a scheme arguably more lucrative (and arguably less criminal) than the complex dastardly plots that are a trademark of the series.?

Although the Joker’s motives are undoubtedly irrational, there’s a strange sincerity in the way he talks about his “work” that forces me to wonder whether the Joker hasn’t swallowed a little of his own kool-aid at some point in this fiction within a fiction. “I couldn’t help myself—I’m an artist!” he exclaims with just a tad too much conviction, taking genuine pleasure in the applause this morsel of genius elicits from his victims.

As an art instructor he praises with mock sincerity the monstrosities of his worst students, while denouncing Bruce Wayne’s unsurprisingly adept efforts at classical sculpture. This is perhaps the villain at his most villainous, promising a freedom from hard work and practice that is utterly at odds with the generally white bread atmosphere of the series. But even at his worst, the Joker is unusually sympathetic. The underlying message of “Pop Goes the Joker” is as critical of the privileged and lazy as it is of the philosophy behind the art they covet, and although the Joker makes a mockery of craft and tradition, he hasn’t spared Gotham’s decadent and aloof upper classes, either.?

As the drama escalates, the Joker cultivates a strange codependent relationship with his sycophant patron and the city’s upper class, manipulating and debasing them in what can only be interpreted as evidence of the sadism inherent in a subculture where artists are not required to be nice, only talented. Able to justify even the most irrational behavior as an act in the name of art, the Joker misleads weak, tired minds, too fatigued from their struggle up the social ladder to resist his predation. His victims, rapt with paradoxical adulation for their abuser, seem hungry for his derision.

With all that said, I think it’s important to take any message buried in this episode with a grain of salt, as nuanced and astute as its execution may be. For all its seeming criticism of conceptual or non-objective art and those who consume it, there is a fabulous and surreal quality to the lavish visuals and absurd narrative that would make even Andy Warhol smile. Although the writers were without a doubt mirroring a pervasive and time-honored consternation with abstract art prevalent both now and then, the lavish set pieces, brilliant color, and biting parody are more reminiscent of a trip through the Museum of Modern Art than an afternoon spent amongst renaissance master work.

The Joker is quick to note that “art styles change, but crime goes on forever,” which is perhaps true if one is unable to divorce artists and their work from the exorbitant sums that were without a doubt making headlines around the time this episode first aired. But the pleasure of viewing art has never really been about commerce, anyway. A large part of what makes contemporary art so exciting is its eclectic and interdisciplinary nature, its strangeness and ability to continually surprise—something the Joker can undoubtedly appreciate.

Sam Weber is a science fiction/fantasy illustrator based in New York City. Check out his gallery here on Tor.com.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/joker-and-iconoclast/feed/3Big Screen Batman: Batman Foreverhttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-forever/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-forever/#commentsThu, 03 Feb 2011 14:01:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-forever/Robin has frequently been a controversial figure in the history of Batman comics. Several different characters have worn the costume, as DC has seen fit to alternate between making Batman a loner or deciding he needs a sidekick based on its sense of the prevailing popular preference. The relationship between Bruce Wayne and his various […]]]>

Robin has frequently been a controversial figure in the history of Batman comics. Several different characters have worn the costume, as DC has seen fit to alternate between making Batman a loner or deciding he needs a sidekick based on its sense of the prevailing popular preference. The relationship between Bruce Wayne and his various youthful wards has been deemed unsavory by some, first and most notoriously the morality crusader Frederic Wertham in the 1950s. This perception is based far more in the prejudices (or juvenile sense of humor) in the eye of the beholder than it is in the material content of the Batman canon, but it is nonetheless ironic that all this notoriety arose in connection with a character who is most often (re)introduced to the canon as a means to make Batman more family-friendly.

“Family-friendly” was the most frequently-used phrase in explanations why Tim Burton was asked to step aside after directing two pictures and assume a solely producing role in subsequent installments. Warner Bros was dissatisfied with the box-office grosses of Batman Returns and decided that a lighter, less adult tone was what was necessary, and so new director Joel Schumacher, fresh off a commercial success with The Client (featuring a youthful protagonist) was hired.

There’s an element of subjectivity involved in comparing one artist to another, and “darker” is certainly not synonymous with “better.” That being said, defending Joel Schumacher as a director is nearly impossible. His visual choices—having the camera tilted at all kinds of weird random angles and slapping neon on everything, not to mention putting nipples on the Batsuit—have little apparent artistic purpose. All of the above choices were made in the interests of entertainment, and there is certainly nothing wrong with movies being fun, but none of them really serve the movie in any meaningful way, or have anything tangible to do with Batman as a character.

One thing that did was a casting change. Michael Keaton decided not to return, so the role was offered to a very large number of actors, of whom Val Kilmer was selected. Kilmer, an actor known for his habit of “disappearing” into characters, clashed with the director over the way each thought the character should be played. Whether or not this contributed to Kilmer’s flat, affect-less delivery is unclear, but his delivery lacked affect and was flat. It’s a very odd performance, and stands in distinct contrast to almost the entire rest of the cast.

The villains in Batman Forever seem to be in a competition to see who can give the most outrageously over-the-top performance. Jim Carrey’s Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones’s Two-Face (Billy Dee Williams was fired for no given reason, sadly for him: he took the part as Harvey Dent in the ’89 movie specifically to play Two-Face in a sequel) team up to brainwash Gotham’s citizenry with a device Carrey invents as Edward Nygma, scientist in Bruce Wayne’s employ; after Wayne expresses ethical concerns, Nygma becomes the Riddler, and embraces his inner villain. As frenetic as Carrey is here, his performance still works (and in any case he’s no more caffeinated than Frank Gorshin’s incarnation). Jones’ Two-Face matches him step for scenery-chewing step; as this sort of hammy villainy goes, Carrey and Jones make an excellent pair. Their performances suit the surrounding movie neatly.

The conflict in Batman Forever is not merely that between Batman and this nefarious twosome. There’s also a love interest, played by Nicole Kidman, who studies Batman’s psychology and gets kidnapped by the bad guys, and of course, there is Robin. Chris O’Donnell briefly had a career for unknown reasons in the mid-90s, and in Batman Forever he spends almost the entire movie manifesting one default emotion: cocky, unfocused, thoughtless, anger. His endless repetition of this one note, and the exasperatingly stupid actions of the character, make any contribution Robin might have to this movie null and void, and any redemption in the eyes of Robin-haters becomes impossible.

Strangely, in spite of this, Batman Forever is still a reasonably entertaining movie. Its return to the TV show as partial inspiration feels like a bit of a regression in literary terms, but let us not forget, the TV show’s silliness was fun. And whatever one might think of the choice to go lighter from an artistic perspective, it succeeded financially: Batman Forever’s box-office gross neatly split the difference between the first two movies, an indication that the average moviegoer found Forever more to their liking than Returns.

The turbulent relationship between Schumacher and Kilmer led to Kilmer leaving the franchise almost while the movie was still in theaters. After another long casting search, it was decided that George Clooney—then known mainly for his work on TV’s ER, would wear the nippled Batsuit in the next installment of the franchise. Surely nothing could go wrong with that choice? Tune in next time for a discussion of Batman & Robin. And feel perfectly free to call me Shirley, I don’t mind at all.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/03/big-screen-batman-batman-forever/feed/12Everything About 3-Dimensional Heroes I Learned From a 2-Dimensional Cartoonhttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/everything-about-3-dimensional-heroes-i-learned-from-a-2-dimensional-cartoon/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/everything-about-3-dimensional-heroes-i-learned-from-a-2-dimensional-cartoon/#commentsWed, 02 Feb 2011 23:22:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/everything-about-3-dimensional-heroes-i-learned-from-a-2-dimensional-cartoon/Before I started watching anime, and before I knew that the series I grew up watching were partially animated in Japan or Korea, I waited for Friday afternoon at 5:30 on FOX, when I could watch a new episode of Batman: The Animated Series. My ritual involved shutting off all the lights, locking myself in the basement, and carefully munching sour cream n’onion potato chips one by one, each dune-like ripple of starch vanishing steadily between my fresh-grown adult teeth.

Batman: The Animated Series forged my first real relationship with the Caped Crusader. Sure, I watched the Adam West series in syndication during the long afternoons spent alone at home each summer, but my 1983 incept date interfered with my childhood enjoyment of either the Tim Burton films or Frank Miller’s seminal involvement in the DC canon. From third grade to fifth, Kevin Conroy was my Batman. Which is to say: Bruce Timm and Paul Dini were my Batman, with occasional appearances by Steve Englehart and Dennis O’Neil. Officially, the series lasted from 1992 to 1998, morphing over the years into The Adventures of Batman and Robin and The New Batman Adventures, which were paired alongside a show about Superman. But that first season, a whopping 63 episodes, was the best.

It won the Emmy Awards (for “Robin’s Reckoning, Parts I & II,” and “Heart of Ice”), and it re-wrote the canon to the point of introducing new characters and plot developments (Harley Quinn in “Joker’s Favor,” and Mr. Freeze’s tragic motivation in “Heart of Ice”). Those episodes were darker, smarter, and more enjoyable than any other offerings intended for American children at the time. They had everything: great writing, superb direction, groundbreaking art production and design, and cohesive narrative arcs that rewarded repeat viewing. The series also featured stellar voice actors, with guest appearances from Roddy McDowall, Ron Perlman and Adrienne Barbeau, and Mark Hamill’s unforgettable turn as The Joker.

Kevin Conroy provided Batman’s voice. Most actors portraying superheroes wrestle with how to embody the duality of their characters. Some, like Tobey Maguire, display nebbishy nervousness in their civilian lives, then gain confidence once they’ve donned the uniform. But voice actors must project their opposing natures without the benefit of wearing a costume or standing on set. Under the direction of the now legendary Andrea Romano, Kevin Conroy performed this job deftly, transitioning seamlessly between the privileged self-assuredness of Bruce Wayne to the hard-bitten judgment of Batman, shading the space between with gradients of tenderness, disgust and pity for friends and foes alike. He brought this same talent to the Justice League animated series and other DCAU films, subtly tightening his delivery when speaking with Wonder Woman and layering distrust and suspicion over his conversations with Superman. Reading the comics I now hear Conroy’s voice, because his performance formed my impression of who and what the Dark Knight should be.

Above all, the Dark Knight should be a human being.

“You’re only human,” Dick Grayson tells him in “I Am The Night,” after the shooting of Jim Gordon. “You do all one man can do, more than any man can be expected to do.”

It’s not good enough, Batman reminds him. It’s never good enough.

“I Am The Night” functions as a sort of mission statement for the series as a whole. Like Batman’s myth, it begins in Crime Alley. Then it quickly shifts from the ritual of the roses to the rescue of a misguided street kid to the shooting of Jim Gordon by a petty thug. Batman intervenes, but is too late. “If I had only been there five minutes earlier…” he says, spiraling into the deep and ceaseless shame that so defines the animated series’ vision of the character. As he later informs Dick, Commissioner Gordon is the age Bruce’s father would have been, had he lived. Bruce is terrified of losing him. In fact, he’s terrified of losing anyone. This fear fuels the ferocity with which he defends the people of Gotham, and its intensity is matched only by that of his love for the ones who know his secret. Paralyzed by guilt, Batman discards his mask and decides to live entirely as Bruce Wayne. He holds this vow exactly as long as it takes for Gordon’s shooter to escape from prison, and for Dick to slip on the green tights and promise to hunt him alone. For as much as Batman may hate himself, he loves Robin more, and he can’t bear to let his partner pay for his own mistakes.

The episode ends with Batman confronting Gordon’s shooter, jamming his gun with a Batarang just as he’s about to hit both Barbara and Jim. Bullock (who spent the episode blaming Batman for Gordon’s condition) wrestles the shooter to the ground and cuffs him. Because this is melodrama, Jim awakens in that moment. He tells Batman that if he were a bit younger, he’d like to be a hero, too. Batman gently squeezes the old man’s hand. “You are a hero.”

“I Am The Night” might be one of the series’ most heart-wrenching episodes, but even the zaniest possessed this same ability to connect with the audience at an emotional level. The premise of “The Laughing Fish” rests on the Joker’s completely audacious plan to literally re-brand all the fish in the waters off Gotham with his own smiling face, then collect the trademark royalties. He terrorizes the city’s copyright attorneys when he finds out that one can’t trademark a natural resource. It makes no sense at all, but the episode works because we see the awful lengths the Joker is willing to go to get his way: poisoning cats, taking over the airwaves with his own bizarre commercials, dangling Batman and Bullock over a shark tank and then battering Batman with a wrench before throwing himself into the sea.

The Batman/Joker relationship plays out delightfully over the series. While the Joker’s obsession with Batman may have been news to civilian viewers of The Dark Knight, anyone familiar with the animated series saw it coming from miles away. “The Man Who Killed Batman” hits the nail on the head: when a low-level thug named Syd “The Squid” seemingly shoots the world’s greatest detective, the Joker holds a funeral in Batman’s memory. His eulogy for his nemesis is filled with mingled admiration, contempt, and rage at not having done the deed himself.

Similarly, Batman and Catwoman’s chemistry comes across far more clearly in the animated series than it ever did in Tim Burton’s film, partly because there’s more time for it to develop and partly because Timm and Dini’s Catwoman is neither a madwoman nor a victim. I know that according to the Justice League animated series, Batman spent his time on the Watchtower holding his breath whenever Wonder Woman entered a room, but I think that back in Gotham his chest was Selina Kyle’s personal scratching post. The two spend most every episode together either rescuing one another or missing dates with their un-masked personae. When the Scarecrow drugs Batman into living his dream life in “Perchance to Dream,” Bruce is engaged to Selina. And in “Tyger, Tyger,” the series’ most fetish-tastic episode, Batman still loves her even after a mad scientist turns her furry.

Naturally, any discussion of Batman: The Animated Series is incomplete without mention of the production design. Unlike, say, the X-Men animated series or its other contemporaries, B:tAS’s production design did a huge amount of worldbuilding. Although the series’ producers had wanted a “dark deco” look for the series, the designs didn’t gain traction until Tim Burton’s films enjoyed success.

But B:tAS’s design sensibility actually does the job a bit better for being less aggressively weird, and supporting the stories rather than distracting from them. The atemporal aesthetic allowed the old-fashioned trickery of small-time crooks to sit nicely alongside science fictional advances in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It was one of the first cartoons broadcast in America to look better with the lights off, so viewers could appreciate those moments when Batman melted out of the shadows to surprise Commissioner Gordon on a lonely rooftop. It was cinematic in a way that few series since have been, with lingering shots over Gotham’s spires and romantic landscapes featuring Wayne Manor or Arkham Asylum. The series looked stylized without being cartoon-y, and Gotham seemed like a place designed by adults for adults. The towers were tall, the alleys dark and narrow, the streets dirty and the signage elaborate. You could get in serious trouble, there.

When I was nine years old, the place I most wanted to live was Gotham City.

Obviously, no single post can articulate everything I love about this series. But aside from the great writing and the superb delivery and the phenomenal design, I appreciate its uncompromising commitment to quality, despite the youth of its intended audience and the sheer volume of its episodes. It took taste to like this show. It required focus. Nearly every kid I knew liked Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Only vaguely creepy kids, like me, obsessed over this show in the way that I did. For the others like me, I recommend:

That said, what I really love best about this series was what it taught me about Batman as a character, and about heroism in general. As Robin reminds Batman in “I Am The Night,” the first step to being a hero is never giving up. Ever. Not when you’re scared, not when you’re hurt, not when you realize that you’re a wreck of a human being, and that all the tools on your belt can’t fix what’s broken inside of you. Not even when you fail. Especially not when you fail. Our families and cities and leagues don’t stop needing us when we fall down or come up short. If anything, they need us more than ever in those moments, because we’ve let them down. Failure is not an excuse for quitting, any more than one’s own flaws and limitations are. Those are human things, and being human is no excuse for refusing to face the night.

Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer, futurist-in-training, anime fan and immigrant living in Toronto.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/everything-about-3-dimensional-heroes-i-learned-from-a-2-dimensional-cartoon/feed/12Big Screen Batman: Batman Returnshttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-returns/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-returns/#commentsWed, 02 Feb 2011 20:49:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-returns/With Batman not only a success but the dominant force in popular culture in the summer of 1989, a sequel went into development almost immediately. Tim Burton was reluctant to make a sequel that was just a rehash of the first, and went to work on Edward Scissorhands while Sam Hamm wrote a few initial […]]]>

With Batman not only a success but the dominant force in popular culture in the summer of 1989, a sequel went into development almost immediately. Tim Burton was reluctant to make a sequel that was just a rehash of the first, and went to work on Edward Scissorhands while Sam Hamm wrote a few initial drafts. When Burton returned, having negotiated terms that included almost complete creative control—benefits of a monster success—he immediately fired Hamm and brought in Daniel Waters, the writer of the cult classic Heathers.

Burton was mildly dissatisfied with the first movie and sought to make the sequel darker and less conventionally comic-book-y. Waters, working toward this end, crafted a script rife with political intrigue, critique of the rich and powerful, and revenge. Waters’s script is more ambitious than the first movie’s, by far, but it loses a degree of focus on Batman, and Bruce Wayne. The villains Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, Selina Kyle/Catwoman, and industrialist Max Shreck (named after actor Max Schreck, who played the title vampire in Nosferatu) are so rich, so much more interesting than Bruce Wayne, that it’s almost a shame that the movie is called Batman Returns. Does he have to? It’d be a dark sort of fun to see these three villains run amok unimpeded for two hours.

Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is less of the problem this time around, in part because he has a better script, in part because he’s settling into the character a bit more, but mainly because he doesn’t have to act opposite Jack Nicholson this time. Danny De Vito is excellent as a vividly drawn Grand Guignol Penguin, born deformed with webbed fingers and toes, cast away by his family, which fuels his desire to get revenge against the entire world. De Vito’s performance occupies less space and does not throw the movie as off-kilter as Nicholson’s, making it simultaneously less iconic and yet more of an asset to the movie.

Christopher Walken, as Max Shreck, turns in one of his more controlled performances, which is not to say that it is dull, by any means. When Christopher Walken is playing the villain with a remotely competent writer supplying him incentive to stay on text, you are in good hands. The fact that he, in many ways, is an even worse person than the Penguin and Catwoman only adds to the richness of his evil.

Catwoman leads into one of the slightly problematic aspects of Batman Returns. The character of Catwoman is written almost more as an antihero here than a flat-out villain; Waters and Burton planned to spin Catwoman off for her own starring vehicle, a plan that was sunk when Warner Bros decided to take the Batman franchise in a lighter, more family-friendly direction (and, after a long and extremely boring and destructive development history, leading to the unfortunate Halle Berry vehicle). The writer and director’s desire to give her her own movie is part of why Catwoman seems incomplete in Batman Returns, though Michelle Pfeiffer is a great deal of fun in the role, cutting loose in a wonderfully broad fashion, and her Catwoman costume is indeed a sight to behold.

But again, the problem is Batman. He should not be the least interesting character in a movie that not only bears his name, but heralds his return. Michael Keaton’s best moment in the whole picture is when he addresses a problematic scene in the first movie where Kim Basinger’s vacant Vicki Vale wanders emotionally into the Batcave by pointedly reminding Alfred of his mistake in doing so. Even this is less Keaton’s moment than it is Daniel Waters poking fun at Sam Hamm. Especially in two Batman movies that take such pains to go back in one important regard to Batman’s origins as an existential loner, the fact that Batman is so uninteresting is highly disappointing.

Keaton should not shoulder all the blame for this, though. Tim Burton displayed less interest in Batman as a character in either movie than as a visual symbol. This is why, while both movies are quite entertaining, there is that small bit of wonder at just how good they would have been with a better Bruce Wayne. This, of course, an unanswerable question, and in the meantime, Batman Returns is a fine bit of entertainment, and perhaps a truer expression of Burton’s vision than the first.

As for vision, Batman Returns is every bit as visually delicious as the first picture, if not more. The visual ideas introduced in Batman, with the totalitarian architecture an even better symbol of Gotham’s institutions, and of Max Shreck’s insidious power over them all. Tim Burton’s patented Gothic nightmare imagery is on fuller display, a reflection perhaps of his greater control over the movie at large.

Unlike the occasional awkwardness when auteur directors come into contact with big-budget franchises with extensive, established mythologies (Alfonso Cuaron’s divisive take on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, for instance) Tim Burton’s distinct style serves Batman as a character. The design of Gotham City, while carried to a greater extreme, nonetheless is quite close to the comics of the early 40s. Batman’s co-creator Bob Kane frequently endorsed Burton’s movies as being a close representation of his own vision, which definitely counts for something.

That last is another reason why it was unfortunate that Batman Returns was regarded as a bit of a disappointment on its first release. The two most cited reasons—that it was “too dark” and that there was no Jack Nicholson—are a bit confusing to me, as the shot I remember most in the picture is a daytime shot of Gotham City covered in snow that was actually quite bright, and lovely (and as much as I love Jack, he is a bit of an attention magnet, and not always to the benefit of the given picture). These complaints were reflected in considerably lower box-office receipts: Batman Returns cost almost twice as much as its predecessor, and grossed half as much.

This perceived failure led Warner Bros to change directions, and steer the franchise in a lighter, more family-friendly direction. More discussion on the repercussions of that decision when we continue with Batman Forever.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-returns/feed/6Batman and The Cape vs. My Childhood Memorieshttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/batman-and-the-cape-vs-my-childood-memories/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/batman-and-the-cape-vs-my-childood-memories/#commentsWed, 02 Feb 2011 20:08:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/batman-and-the-cape-vs-my-childood-memories/
Recently, I had to admit to myself that I’ve become quite the film and TV snob. Whereas at one time in my life there was nothing I wanted more than a new Jean Claude Van Damme/Steven Seagal/superhero movie, these days I want something with a hefty, even difficult, plot, intelligent dialogue, and striking visuals. I find myself watching a lot of foreign film and what I’ll call non-fiction television such as cooking shows and documentaries.

If my twelve-year-old self could look forward into time, he would be very disappointed with me. I had this epiphany when a friend was trying to get me to watch a superhero movie and dismissed him, not with a wave, but with a litany of reason as to why the superhero genre in general and the film in question specifically weren’t worth my time.

But is that fair? Am I missing out on things that I would like?

I surmised I was being both unfair and likely missing out on things that I would enjoy watching. I used to love superheroes. I collected comic books, went to movies, watched television shows, ate my lunch in a superhero lunchbox, dressed-up as superheroes for Halloween… I know that between the superheroes and classic Star Trek my love for genre was born.

My friends and I couldn’t get enough of the Adam West Batman TV show. We watched it in syndication (along with shows like The Brady Bunch, Spider-Man, and Love, American Style) since we were watching it in the late 1970s instead of in the 1960s when it first aired. I think even then we knew the show was a little on the silly side, but we loved it nonetheless.

And I still remember it fondly. Having found reruns on cable, I discovered that I still enjoy watching it. So while my proclivity for new material seems to run to the snobby and literary, I’m perfectly happy with the schlockiness of my childhood.

With this in mind, I decided to give The Cape a try. The previews I saw reminded me very much of Batman, although I have to admit not so much the television show with Adam West, but the more recent spate of movies, particularly the last few starring Christian Bale. I think it’s the dark color palette that the show uses. Well that, and the fact that there’s a muscular guy in a cape punching bad guys.

I couldn’t help but compare the show to Batman as every scene, every frame passed by. There’s the stuff that comes from the comic books like the look of the Cape’s costume and the crazy villians. There are things that seem to come from the movies and television like Faraday’s training that reminded me of Christian Bale in Batman Begins or the campy humor that was a driving factor in the 1960s television show.

It’s almost like the producers of The Cape wanted to pull what they saw as all the best bits of Batman and combine them into one show. What happens in reality is that the show doesn’t do enough to distance itself from the tropes that make Batman what it is. And it doesn’t pull off those tropes as well as Batman does.

But what about the twelve-year-old me? What would he think of this? He would have loved the show. He wouldn’t have minded the similarities to Batman because that just meant he didn’t have to wait to watch Batman shows he’s seen a hundred times already. This would be new stories, replete with cool villians, wicked fights, and, if he was honest with himself, Summer Glau.

Keeping that in mind, I’m going to keep watching The Cape. Whether it makes the three seasons that Batman ran remains to be seen. Despite the relatively few seasons, the show aired twice a week initially and had 120 episodes in all.

Unfortunately, Batman ran its success into the ground. The episodes became more farcical and formulaic. Bringing in Batgirl in season three in an attempt to draw more female viewers only forestalled the inevitable. I can’t imagine The Cape running for 120 episodes.

I think the best it can hope for is to make it through this half-season and get picked up for one more season. It doesn’t have the intrigue of shows like LOST or Heroes or even Fringe where viewers will tune in to see how the mystery gets solved. We already know the solution. If there wasn’t already the iconic Batman for The Cape to contend with, perhaps it would make a bigger impact.

But in my opinion, without Batman, the idea for The Cape would have never come to fruition in the first place.

John Klima is the editor of Electric Velocipede, which won the 2009 Best Fanzine Hugo Award and has been nominated four years in a row for a World Fantasy Award. He also works full-time in libraries, surrounded by books. It’s a lovely thing, actually.

I’ve been a Batman fan for most of my life. Some of my earliest memories of the character include watching the 1960s TV series with Adam West, or various cartoon versions with Batman and Robin working alone or as part of the Super Friends. There were Batman comic books, coloring books, action figures, Halloween costumes, pajamas, and whatever else a young boy could get his hands on, all while quizzical parents watched and wondered what was so fascinating about a guy fighting crime in his underwear.

As I grew older, my interest in the character began to wane. I’d long since stopped watching the cartoons or reruns of the 60s series, and I fell out of reading most comics, Batman’s included, by the time I was in my middle to late teens. I finished high school and entered the military, figuring that I was finally a “grown up.” Then, two things happened.

The first came in 1986, with the wildly marketed and anticipated comics mini-series by Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The second was the 1989 Batman film. Both of these stories helped re-energize my appreciation for comics in general, and Batman in particular. I realized that I could enjoy the character just as I had during my childhood, only now I was reading him in stories written for adults. Batman was no longer the guy you invited to the party so he could show you a funky dance. No more “BAM!” or “BIFF!” or “ZOWIE!” He was a dark, cynical figure, who had no reservations about breaking bones if that’s what was required to corral a criminal.

Wow. Go figure. This was a side of the character I’d never seen, nor one I would’ve been able to appreciate as a young boy. But now? Bring it on. Gimme more! Of course, as I dug deeper, I saw that in his earliest portrayals, Batman was a pulp-fiction hero and that’s how he was written, with those stories offering a much rougher, tougher character who not only beat up his opponents, but sometimes even killed them. He was a far cry from the guy with the cape, mask, and “Bat-gadgets” I remembered from Saturday morning TV, and I began to understand that he had been subjected to numerous, often conflicting depictions over the decades; “re-imaginings,” if you’ll allow. Now armed with this newfound knowledge, and while I preferred my Batman to be grittier and edgier, I could appreciate that he was the sort of character who could be presented as different things to different age groups, and that no one version need be the “right” one.

Fast forward almost twenty years. By now, my love for comics as well as characters like Batman and Superman (and Captain America, just to throw some love in Marvel’s direction) exceeds any interest I’d held in my youth. Comics, movies, television series, and novels have succeeded in providing us with all manner of stories featuring these characters. While many of these tales are without question aimed at adults, there also is a large, age-appropriate selection available for younger readers. That made sense to me, as it was as a kid that I first learned to love the characters in the first place. With that in mind, perhaps you, like me, have been surprised and even amused by those fans who always seem to decry these “watered down” stories featuring their beloved characters. “Batman’s not for kids!” and variations of this battle cry are not uncommon among some segments of hardcore Batman fandom.

Not for kids? My six or seven-year old self would definitely have taken issue with that. My four-year old daughter would have something to say about it, too.

One of the things my daughter likes to do with her daddy is watch Batman. In this case, it’s a version of the Caped Crusader that’s appropriate for someone her age. Together, we watch Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which I absolutely love for its fun, retro approach, with art that reminds me of the Batman from the 1930s and 40s as drawn by the late, great Dick Sprang. I’ve heard fans argue that this portrayal of the character is “ridiculous.” He travels to other planets, or through time? What the heck’s with that? I just shrug and point to the various flavors of Super Friends cartoons from the 1970s and 80s, which often were inspired by those wild, fun stories from the Silver Age comics era, when the Justice League and everybody else was jumping into space for one reason or another. My daughter loves those, too, along with those episodes of Scooby-Doo where Scooby and the gang meet up with Batman and Robin.

I can hear the fanboy teeth clenching from here.

My daughter’s interest in the character extends to other media, too. She has issues of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold comic that spins off from the cartoon, and one of her favorite books is Batman: The Story of the Dark Knight, written and drawn by Ralph Cosentino. She wears a T-shirt with the “Bat-logo” to school. I’ve had to get her action figures of her own to play with, so that she’ll leave my “collectibles” alone on the shelf. She has her eye on my scaled-down replica of the 1960s Batmobile, but so far I’ve managed to protect it from her. Not sure how much longer it’ll hold out, though.

The point is, I have my Batman, and my daughter has hers (though I get to enjoy that version, too). I can sit down with her and read her a Batman comic or storybook, or we can watch a Batman cartoon. After she goes to bed, I can spin up The Dark Knight on DVD, or reread The Killing Joke or Hush, or something like Andrew Vacchs’ The Ultimate Evil or even Kevin J. Anderson’s Enemies and Allies.

So, yeah: Batman can be for kids, be they the real, honest-to-goodness little guys and gals, or those of us who are still kids on the inside.

That said, I’m gonna pass on the Batman undies this time, if that’s okay with everybody.

Dayton Ward is a freelance writer living in Kansas City. Even Batman comes here when he wants some good barbecue.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/a-batman-for-all-ages/feed/6Big Screen Batman: Batman (1989)https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-1989/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-1989/#commentsWed, 02 Feb 2011 15:27:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-1989/Following the success of his first feature Pee Wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, Tim Burton was hired by Warner Bros to direct a new Batman feature. Burton, not a particularly big fan of Batman or of comic books in general (this will be important later), displayed a degree of indifference to the first several treatments […]]]>

Following the success of his first feature Pee Wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, Tim Burton was hired by Warner Bros to direct a new Batman feature. Burton, not a particularly big fan of Batman or of comic books in general (this will be important later), displayed a degree of indifference to the first several treatments that were written; one of his main worries was that the studio wanted a movie along the lines of the 60s TV show, which was not one he cared to make.

In 1988 several factors converged: one, Burton’s Beetlejuice, with Michael Keaton as the title role, was released to great success, and two, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke was released to great acclaim. The Killing Joke followed in the footsteps of Frank Miller’s seminal The Dark Knight Returns, and Burton, reading both books, discovered an angle to Batman that interested him. Coincidentally, Warner Bros saw the success of the comics as an indicator that a movie version could succeed, and greenlit Burton’s movie.

Now, because Burton was neither a writer nor a particularly knowledgeable comics fan, he began working with screenwriter Sam Hamm for no particular reason other than Hamm’s greater comics fandom. To cast his leading man, Burton chose Keaton, which led to outraged reaction from many fans of the comic; Burton dismissed this as the fans assuming that he would be aping the comic tone of the TV show. Whether or not this was the real reason for the outrage, the casting of Michael Keaton would prove to be the second biggest problem with the movie, with the first being Hamm’s script, which featured some of the most embarrassing dialogue ever allowed in a major release.

The shame of those two crippling flaws is that there is so much to love in Burton’s Batman. It is one of the most visually beautiful movies ever made, with Burton and production designer Anton Furst creating a Gotham City like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as designed by a Gothic monumentalist—creating the sense that the city itself, much like its corrupt institutions, oppresses the citizenry—with cinematographer Roger Pratt shooting it in a manner suggesting film noir, a form built around the very shadows Batman uses to lay in wait for criminals.

Bridging the gap between asset and flaw is the legendary performance by Jack Nicholson as The Joker, one of a handful of performances in the history of cinema that actually became a problem by being too good. This is not Jack’s fault. Never an actor known for his underplaying, Jack pulls out all the stops here, giving a performance so large it has gravitational pull (he is, after all, a star). He is flamboyant, funny, grotesque, and terrifying, often simultaneously, in one of the all-time great villainous performances. The strain on Jack’s psyche was reportedly so great that he (possibly apocryphally) advised Heath Ledger not to take the role as the Joker, but he was well compensated: on top of a salary of $6 million, Jack received a percentage of the gross that was reportedly close to $50 million.

It is the size and power of Jack’s Joker than makes Michael Keaton’s strong-but-wrong choice to portray Bruce Wayne as a dotty eccentric look even weaker. Michael Keaton is a fine actor—his failure in Burton’s Batman pictures is an aberration, the rest of his career features almost exclusively very good work—but a Batman movie is not one where the audience should be rooting for the bad guy, and that is what, by default, the audience ends up doing in Batman.

The fault for this can be laid at Tim Burton’s feet, for as brilliant a job as he did constructing a physical Gotham City, the way in which he populated that city is highly suspect. Burton explicitly stated that he was not interested in making a silly, comedic picture a la the 1966 iteration, which makes it odd to say the least that the cast is populated so heavily with comedians and comic actors. The choice of Jack as the Joker is above reproach, but Michael Keaton’s entire previous body of work was comedic. Robert Wuhl. Kim Basinger (whose acting, by and large, was itself the joke most of her career). Jack Palance, while not usually a comic actor in name, was nonetheless such a ham as to be a de facto comedian. With the exception of the genuinely inspired choice of Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, the majority of the principal cast of Batman would have been, ironically, more at home in a comedy of the sort Burton professed to not want to make.

It is not just because of the lousy script and weird acting that Batman is the template of the modern blockbuster, though. It has a genuine feeling of excitement, of being an event, that makes it possible, more often than not, to overlook its flaws. Most of the conversations I’ve had in which I’ve advanced the above views have ended with the other person telling me, “Yeah, but it’s Batman.” As irrational an argument as that certainly is, it is nonetheless one for which I have no rebuttal. Warts and all, this isBatman. That means something.

Batman builds on the foundation of The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke to get back to the basics of Batman as a character; whatever Michael Keaton’s portrayal got wrong, the one thing it got absolutely right was the sense of Batman as a loner, someone apart from other people, who relied on intellect and ingenuity rather than superpowers. This is why, though Batman drew its more serious tone from the comics of the past several years, the fact that it reached such a considerably wider audience made it arguably the more important force in getting society at large to take Batman seriously again. And this is why, any flaws aside, Tim Burton’s Batman is such an important entry in the Bat-canon.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/02/big-screen-batman-batman-1989/feed/19The Real Man of Tomorrow: Why the Caped Crusader is a Science Fiction Herohttps://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/the-real-man-of-tomorrow-why-the-caped-crusader-is-a-science-fiction-hero/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/the-real-man-of-tomorrow-why-the-caped-crusader-is-a-science-fiction-hero/#commentsTue, 01 Feb 2011 21:08:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/the-real-man-of-tomorrow-why-the-caped-crusader-is-a-science-fiction-hero/Comic book superheroes are frequently zipping in and out of discussions about science fiction, and why not? After all, many superheroes, like Spider-Man, the Flash, or the Incredible Hulk derive their powers from fantastical science fictional accidents. Further, some superheroes have bona fide extraterrestrial connections by virtue of being an actual space-alien (Superman) or having space-alien cronies (Green Lantern). And yet, among this pantheon of aliens and mutants, there are some superheroes with no “super” powers at all. These are simply regular people dressed up in funny costumes.

The greatest of these nut jobs is the Batman. And at first glance, because he’s not a meta-human or a super-human, one might not consider the Bat or his exploits to be science fictional at all. But, in most ways, he’s more SF than any of his contemporaries.

Now, it would be easy to say that the reason why Batman is a science fiction hero is because he inhabits a science fiction universe. If one sees Batman in the context of the larger DC universe, then this would certainly be true. This version of Batman keeps a kryptonite bullet locked away in his cave, just in case he needs to handle Earth’s resident altruistic alien, should the big blue Boy Scout get out of hand. This Batman is aware of Lex Luthor and all of his various dealings with Brainac. This Batman has hung out with a green guy called Martian Manhunter, who probably didn’t get that nickname on a Gotham City playground. Finally, the Batman of the larger DC universe has been through numerous crises involving a plethora of parallel Earths; likely more times than even his fantastic brain can remember.

But this is all too easy. A science fiction context does not necessarily make something real science fiction. True, semantically speaking, the argument may already be won. But we’re after something deeper here. We’re after the soul of the Batman, and whether or not that soul is SF.

In numerous incarnations of Batman, the caped crusader relies heavily upon technology, or his knowledge of forensic science to aid him in solving a specific mystery or besting one of his antagonists. Like his literary ancestor, Sherlock Holmes, Batman uses scientific theories about deduction, psychology, chemistry, and forensics in a fictional context. When he gives the Joker certain anti-psychotic meds in the 2009 Kevin Smith penned story “Cacophony,” we are simply lead to believe that these meds “work” and the Joker is now speaking to Batman as a regular person. Because psychology as it relates to neuroscience are both fields in which new discoveries are being made constantly, the reader must simply accept the fact the drugs employed by Batman do in fact work, which, functionally, is science fiction at its most basic level.

And yet the reader (or viewer) of Batman comics or movies is required to make many more leaps of faith than simple forensic science and chemical storylines. The existence of permanently disfigured persons, like the Penguin or Two-Face, who exist in grotesque states of mutation, is seemingly a lot to swallow. With the exception of gangsters like Carmine Falcone, Batman rarely fights everyday criminals. Usually, his foes are individuals just as colorful or unlikely as he is.

But a leap of faith does not necessarily make something good science fiction. In fact, leaving out the extraterrestrials from the expanded DC universe, so far, all of these things could take place on a sort of crazy cop show. Are cop shows science fiction, because cop shows use forensic science and criminal psychology in a fictional manner? Well, maybe. But I think there’s an even better reason why Batman is a science fiction kind of guy. And it all has to do with the basic theme of “What if?”

The greatest SF authors have always begun their stories with this premise. “What if somebody had a time machine, and was faced with a version of humanity that frightened them?” or “What if our entire world was indeed and in fact a computer program and all of our notions of humanity were questioned?” Or “What if a robot living with humans turned out to be a more moral person than the humans?” These are all wonderful ethical questions raised by the best kind of science fiction. I hesitate to use the term “morality tale,” as it seems to me that morality implies a finite sort of answer, whereas good science fiction asks great ethical questions in fantastical ways.

And Batman does this in spades. Unlike Superman, who is burdened with his powers, Batman can walk away at anytime. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne briefly entertains the notion of giving up his whole Batman gig in favor of letting the new “white knight,” Harvey Dent, take over. How is this a science fictional dilemma, you ask? Well, simple. Remove the science fictional aspects of Batman’s arsenal, remove the way psychology is handled in a fictional way, and BIFF! POW!!!, suddenly, you’re got no story. The way the drama of Batman unfolds is thanks to a science fictional premise. BUT, the drama itself is deeply human.

The reason why so many people love Batman and consider him a more serious hero than many of his peers is because he’s human, and at the core of the best science fiction is an exploration of our own humanity.

Or maybe our own Bat-ness. In any case, the caped crusader, even without his gizmos or super-friends, will always be SF to me.

Ryan Britt’s writing has been published here, on Nerve.com, and Clarkesworld. He has a secret identity that is so secret even he is unaware of it.

Take in an earful of “Rockin’ Chair” and… huh? Listen, you think I’m making this up? That little nugget of Bat-history comes straight from the great Julius Schwartz himself! Wait—what? “Who’s Hoagy Carmichael?” Hey, you’ve got the internets at your finger tips, bub—the entire universe of early-20th century jazz crooners is just a double-click away. Me, I’m simply here to pay homage to one of the most maligned, most misunderstood, most under-appreciated Batman cast members ever.

Aunt Harriet, that sweet, old dame….

You’ve probably heard the story by now, ad nauseum, how Schwartz was handed the Bat-titles to edit back in ’64 and the first thing he felt the need to address was Bruce and Dick’s homosexuality. Err, alleged homosexuality. Anyway, address it he did—by killing off Alfred. No ménage à trois in Stately Wayne Manor, see. And while the Schwartz is at it, a female living under that famous roof might be just the ticket, too.

Enter Aunt Harriet.

At first she was just that: “Aunt Harriet,” a relative of Dick Grayson’s who heard about the Alfred-tragedy and came to take care of the “helpless youngsters” and “little boys” at Wayne Manor. Look it up for yourself; it’s a matter of public record in Detective Comics #328—and you get Alf’s demise in the same issue for no extra charge. Regardless, she was Dick’s aunt, not Bruce’s, but beyond that she was a mystery in a pillbox hat and with an annoying tendency to clean up all the dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes lying around.

It took a certain TV series to give her a last name. After Batman’s debut on January 12th, 1966, she was officially “Mrs. Harriet Cooper” and the comic books got in line and folded the name into their continuity—such as it was in the mid-60s. Now, the lady was a widow of the mysterious Mr. Cooper and, presumably, the sister of Dick’s father. Right? I mean, I think so… let’s check The Essential Batman Encyclopedia to be sure. Ah! Yep, says there that Harriet is the sister of John Grayson, Dick’s late father. I love it when a fictional comic book family tree comes together….

Where was I? Oh, yes: Aunt Harriet. In the comic books, she was something of a busybody and the Caped Crusaders soon learned that above and beyond cooking and cleaning and that infernal tune-less humming, she also liked to install hidden cameras in chandeliers and spread wet pitch across exit roads from secret caves. And before you get all, like, “libel, dude” on me, all that is also public record in Detective Comics #351. Go and check it out for yourself; it’s got go-go chicks on the cover. I’ll wait.

Done, smartie? Let’s move on. Harriet waits for no man, nor fangirl.

Bruce and Dick, clever boys, jus barely scraped by and figured out a way to make the dear old woman think she was nuts and not onto the secret of the century—that they’re super-heroes, dammit, super-heroes!—and all was calm again. Over in the TV series, well, maybe more jittery than calm.

Aunt Harriet in Batman was played, of course, by the wonderful Madge Blake. Say what you want and will, but Madge cemented the character forever in the eternal strata of pop culture. And yes, that’s a good thing. Not nearly as clever as her comic book counterpart, the TV Aunt Harriet nevertheless helped put the “wacky” in Wacky Wayne Manor and endeared her to a generation of kids who grew up on the show. I myself have gone back recently and watched Madge’s performance and she truly does add a certain “something” to the already clever, sly mix.

Adam West, in his fantastic Back to the Batcave, reports that Ms. Blake was pretty much just like her character at that time, nervous and hesitant and flighty, but that he honestly believed that made her performance a real treasure. Supposedly, he even shouted down some directors who just weren’t grokking the whole thing. Thank God he did, say I, for without Madge’s hand-wringing and stuttering and utterly charming delivery, ol’ Aunt Harriet would have been relegated to the dusty Batcave of dim memory.

“Ohh, Alfred, I just can’t understand where those two are always running off to!” It’s like poetry….

As it stands, Aunt Harriet, or “Hattie” as she referred to herself in her own mind—no, I did not make that up either!—only appeared in barely a dozen or so Batman comic stories; on TV she’s in just about every first and second season episode. Sadly, by the time the third season rolled around, Madge Blake was quite sickly and Harriet only made a precious two cameos. Ah, Madge, we hardly knew ye… rest in peace, dear lady.

After Alfred returned from the dead as a bumpy, chalk-white supernatural villain in Detective Comics #356—you think the TV show was goofy?—Harriet’s place in the Manor became a bit redundant—what, she no longer served her purpose as a chaperone? The butler’s back, for cryin’ out loud!—and the editors tried to kill her off. She survived, thanks to some cryosurgery—listen, I’m getting tired of the disbelief here—and by the end of 1968 she packed her bags, hidden cameras and pitch brushes and moved out. In 1974 she made a silent, token appearance in Batman Family #4, which also is a matter of public record. I couldn’t make up a title like that.

So, where does this leave us? Looking forward, obviously.

Mrs. Harriet Cooper, aunt to Dick Grayson, must return. And there is no better writer already in-place than Grant Morrison to handle such a weighty and delicate resurrection.

Imagine, if you will: Harriet re-enters the lives of our heroes in 2011 but this time as a disguised Talia… or, or Catwoman! Or, wait! Aunt Harriet is a… robot from the future! Maybe she is the most impenetrable mystery of all in Batman’s Black Casebook, the one time in his past that just doesn’t add up. A woman living at Wayne Manor? Dick’s aunt? Cooking and cleaning for them while nosing about in their private business?

I can remember a time when supervillains used to be old-fashioned criminals with a penchant for dressing up rather than the near-godlike beings so many of them are these days. I liked it when they were just bad guys, when motivations were clear-cut and easily understandable.

In the old days, it was easy to invent a supervillain. Some of them were tarnished by unhappy childhoods, their personae formed by significant traumatic events. Some were scarred by experiments that went wrong and they used these to justify their criminal careers. Then there were others who were possessed by some simple human foible, some character flaw that allowed greed or revenge or jealousy to overtake them and dictate all their subsequent actions; they gave in to temptation or an obsessive nature and were consumed by it.

I liked it when they represented an aspect of our own behavior, stuff we keep buried because we rightly try to keep those traits under wraps in a civilized society. I like it when they’re metaphors, acting out on some recognizable human emotion. Supervillains, at their best, are the human subconscious having a childish tantrum. These days we demand slightly more from our storytelling (whether in comics or other media): we want sophisticated motivations and backstory, we want characters with deeper psychologies and irresistible compulsions. We want soap, drama and crossovers, character arcs that mine ever-deeper strata of the human psyche.

Which brings us to the Joker. I like the Joker because he remains curiously resistant to any attempt to overhaul and modernize him. Many writers have added much to the mythology of the character over the years, but ultimately the Joker remains the sinister clown, the laughing maniac, an antithetical opposite to Batman.

I’ll come clean—these days I’m not really sure what Batman is. I grew weary of the never-ending tide of merchandising, the oncoming storm of it that heralds each new movie release. Is he a comics icon, a gaming phenomenon, an advertising character that exists to sell stuff? He’s definitely not just an old comic character anymore. I always liked the old TV show as a kid, Neal Adams’ Batman, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, and the animations helmed by Bruce Timm but beyond that, I’m lost. As my brother observed as we walked out of a movie theater after watching Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight, “That was a great movie about a psychopath. But why did that guy keep getting dressed up in the bat costume?”

Arguably, Nolan’s hyper-realistic take on the character reveals roots that aren’t really supposed to be put under the spotlight, origins that require new levels of suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. Batman on paper, as a character in pulp media, is a great idea—a vigilante dressed in scary clothes to freak out his prey, the criminal underworld.

Some superheroes transcend their pulp origins and translate favorably to the cinema screen—Donner’s Superman, Raimi’s Spider-Man, Favreau’s Iron Man. But not Batman. Not even when he’s handled by consummate directors like Nolan or Tim Burton, not for me. I seem unable to make the same leap of belief with Batman that I can with other heroes making the transition from page to screen. I admit this blind spot. For me, Batman isn’t a character anymore, he’s a brand and he has been for years.

But I always liked the Joker. I liked the idea of the Joker; I liked him because he’s terrifying. For some reason, the Joker still works, as exemplified by my brother’s comment. (Which was also a backhanded compliment to Heath Ledger’s remarkable performance.) If ever there has been a personification of a side of evil that is almost childlike in its straightforward, malignant glee, then it is Batman’s oldest, deadliest enemy. Evil is said to be banal and in the real world, it often is—inertia, stupidity, corruption—but I’m not here to discuss that. This is the great thing about “evil” in comics and as regards the Joker in particular. He exudes both a dark glamour and a lurid appeal that is a stark contrast to Batman and everything Batman’s become.

Batman’s personality has gradually changed over the times, from a dedicated, serious-minded detective to that of a darker, brooding avenger who is simultaneously more earnest and intense. This is as a result of the way serial comics are written, of course, by any number of creative teams (and these days, the cynic in me says, accountants). An iconic superhero is the result of hundreds of different storytellers, each adding their small contribution to the mythos like a coral creature their shell to a reef. Somehow, in all of these storytellers, a consensus of a personality is reached and maintained.

Broadly, that’s how it works for any pop culture character that is reinvented from time to time and written by different teams of creators, from all the Marvel and DC heroes to the Doctor, James Bond, even Sherlock Holmes and every soap character on TV screens around the world. These days, with the amount of reboots around, we apply the same rules to our celluloid heroes as we did to our old literary or pulp ones. These days, even Kirk and Spock can be rethought, reimagined and recast.

But I digress. The Joker—somehow, he’s a little different. He is, of course, also a part of the merchandising empire of Batman. Images of his freakish physiognomy are almost as prevalent as Bats himself. I find that oddly unsettling. Maybe that’s just because clowns are inherently spooky or maybe it’s just down to my perception of the evolution of the character. Whatever and however the official DC chronology currently goes, that malevolent, red-lipped grin remains constant. And, as change is in fact his only consistent characteristic, as his personality is in permanent flux, so severely mutable, the Joker remains something of an archetype.

I’m really not one to follow the DC Universe’s convoluted and labyrinthine continuity but a couple of years ago I read a run of books by Grant Morrison who seemed to nail the essence of the Joker. As I recall, Batfans didn’t unanimously love this run but I always thought Morrison understood the structure of superheroics as modern myth and dark parable better than almost anybody. In this story, the Joker had run amok and was seriously incapacitated by Batman. Recovering at Arkham Asylum, a shadow of his former self, the Clown Prince of Crime was confined to a wheelchair, barely able to speak. And yet, something very like the Joker still stalked Gotham’s streets. This wasn’t just a copycat, an idea gone viral in the distorted mirror mind of another sicko; this was the spirit of the Joker, still out there in the dark night wreaking havoc. It was also Morrison very cleverly acknowledging how deeply such “pulp” characters become a part of humanity’s own cultural psyche and making that idea a part of his own continuing narrative.

The Joker and the Batman have always been two sides of the same card, a Moriarty and Holmes, a Doctor and a Master. Now however, there were hints that there was a supernatural aspect to their symbiotic existence. The Joker is far more than just a fragmented persona constantly reinventing itself. He—or it—is a being that exists to subvert and sabotage humanity. The Joker is a kind of cipher, a blank slate that is constantly reborn as a physical personification of evil whose methods become ever more dangerous and opaque; a creature that continues to take a malignant glee in spreading pain, confusion and fear. If Batman represents the way things should be done—the heroic, the proper, the rigid, the bureaucratic and systemic—the Joker is chaos. Not even his own writers can never precisely pin him down.

For all his origins as a cartoon pulp villain, he is in many ways a manifestation of something freer but darker, perhaps our most sociopathic possibilities played out on the printed page. He exists there, but the idea of him is abiding, enduring. That makes him truly terrifying and totally current, both rooted in the four-color past and yet timeless—truly a super villain for modern times.

Nick Abadzis writes and draws comics. He’s also worked in the field of merchandizing tie-ins, but don’t hold that against him.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/always-leave-em-laughing/feed/3Big Screen Batman: Batman: The Movie (1966)https://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/big-screen-batman-batman-the-movie-1966/
https://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/big-screen-batman-batman-the-movie-1966/#commentsTue, 01 Feb 2011 14:42:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/big-screen-batman-batman-the-movie-1966/The 1966 Batman movie opens with a series of title cards, which proceed from a sincere and sober salute to the law enforcement community to a no less sincere but slightly less sober toast to the strange people of the world. While far more subdued in tone than what follows, these title cards are an […]]]>

The 1966 Batman movie opens with a series of title cards, which proceed from a sincere and sober salute to the law enforcement community to a no less sincere but slightly less sober toast to the strange people of the world. While far more subdued in tone than what follows, these title cards are an apt summation of the picture, which is about a very strange enforcer of the law.

Produced following the first season of the hugely popular television series, Batman shares the silly, brightly-colored tone of the show, written and directed as it is by two series regulars, Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Leslie H. Martinson, respectively. Revisionists of comics history and those who take the form to be a serious art form tend to have either a complex relationship with the Batman television series, or simply loathe it outright. The fact is, however, for a very long period of time—and even, despite the best efforts of the Frank Millers, Alan Moores, and Christopher Nolans of the world, still to a certain extent today—the dominant image of Batman in non-comics fan culture was of the TV show.

I came of age before The Dark Knight Returns, and thus the first Batman I knew was the man in the bright blue cowl who came on right before The Monkees on Nickelodeon. As such I never had to have anyone explain the definition of “camp” to me (between that and being the only 2nd grader in the world who’d seen Mommie Dearest I was already a scholar), but this early association did mean even now, as a respectful fan and student of Batman as a character, cultural figure, and metaphor, I still have a hard time taking him entirely seriously.

This is partly because the television show and the 1966 movie do not take him seriously at all. Or anything else for that matter. The Batman television show/movie might be the single silliest entity ever created by an adult. One could, if one wished to experiment in the movie review as koan, sum up the entire Batman movie by the fact that within ten minutes of it beginning, Batman is hanging from a ladder with a rubber shark gnawing at his leg, as he futilely attempts to loosen the shark’s grip by punching it in the head, creating a deep, hollow rubber tone like that created by bouncing a ball. That Batman extricates himself from this situation with “shark repellent Batspray” should serve merely to confirm that this is one of the silliest things that ever existed. And there are so many more wonders yet to come.

The fact that there is a plot is silly enough, and the fact that it’s a diabolical plot is cause for cheer: the Penguin, Joker, Riddler, and Catwoman have joined forces to steal an experimental weapon and hold the United Nations Security Council hostage for NINE BILLLLLLLLLLION DOLLARS. Oh, be still my heart. Not to mention, they’re going to lure Batman and Robin to their deaths by kidnapping Bruce Wayne and having Catwoman pretend to be a journalist from the Moscow Bugle to seduce him. Oh, and a bunch of people get turned into small piles of colored powder. All these events, of course, are interspersed with untold other silliness:

Commissioner Gordon: Penguin, Joker, Riddler . . . and Catwoman, too! The sum of the angles of that rectangle is too monstrous to contemplate!

Batman: We’ve been given the plainest warning. They’re working together to take over…

Chief O’Hara: Take over what, Batman? Gotham City?

Batman: Any two of them would try that!

Commissioner Gordon: The whole country?

Batman: If it were three of them, I would say yes, but four? Their minimum objective must be . . . the entire world!

Adam West has been done a disservice by history. We today revere William Shatner for his idiosyncratic acting, the mildly disturbing intensity of his courtship of women (not to mention the sense that the force of his libido transcended gender considerations), and his ability to let himself be the butt of the joke yet also be in on it, but Adam West’s performance as Batman/Bruce Wayne is every inch Shatner’s equal in each regard. The fact that Shatner was on a mildly less silly show (fellow TOS fans, don’t you dare forget Tribbles) is unfair to hold against Adam West. His performance in the movie is a cut above his standard turn on the show, in that he is absolutely committed to the

silliness (he would occasionally, especially toward the end, phone in episodes of the show). Burt Ward is a delight as well, bursting with earnestness; though Ward fell all over himself in later years to tell anyone who would listen that he was in on the joke as well, you couldn’t tell it from his performance as Robin, which is actually to his credit: too much ironic detachment is a very bad thing indeed. Some days you just
can't get rid of a bomb

The villains all do their standard hammy jobs, with Burgess Meredith’s broad, vaudeville Penguin faring slightly better than Cesar Romero’s clownish Joker and Frank Gorshin’s extremely caffeinated Riddler. Lee Meriwether, a late replacement for Julie Newmar as Catwoman, is the best of the lot though, turning in what at times inches toward being the closest thing to an actual performance a movie like this will allow; this makes it especially frustrating when she immediately retreats to the sidelines of fight scenes to make hissing noises and unsolicited comments, as her natural ferocity makes her seem more handy in a fight than the men.

As a movie, Batman: The Movie (1966) is little more than an hour and forty five minute episode of the television show, but that is hardly a complaint. It holds up better than nearly any other comedy of the mid-60s (an era whose comedy has aged, to say the least, badly) by being tightly paced, featuring well-constructed jokes, and most importantly, being completely self-aware about what kind of movie it is. It is quite simply something you should never call a “film,” but its makers knew this, and were not setting out to do anything other than entertain. In this, they succeed quite nicely. It may not be the Batman we want to remember, but it was a Batman very much of its time.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/02/01/big-screen-batman-batman-the-movie-1966/feed/7Batman: Plutocrathttps://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/batman-plutocrat/
https://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/batman-plutocrat/#commentsMon, 31 Jan 2011 22:48:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/batman-plutocrat/By their nature as vigilantes, acting outside or above the law, most superheroes have a troubling undercurrent of aristocratic, undemocratic, authoritarian values. Only the hero, not the police, judges, lawmakers, and average citizen, can effectively protect and improve the city they patrol, and god help anyone who gets in their way. No one exemplifies these […]]]>

By their nature as vigilantes, acting outside or above the law, most superheroes have a troubling undercurrent of aristocratic, undemocratic, authoritarian values. Only the hero, not the police, judges, lawmakers, and average citizen, can effectively protect and improve the city they patrol, and god help anyone who gets in their way.

No one exemplifies these tendencies more than Batman, the ultimate aristocratic hero.

Batman acts with an enormous sense of entitlement. Batman just assumes he’s right in every situation. It’s his city. If he doesn’t like you, he’ll make you leave. If Batman thinks you’re guilty of a crime, he’ll put on his pointed black mask and beat the crap out of you. Laws? Civil rights? Due process? Those are for other people. Yes, the people may have elected a mayor, and may pay taxes to employ the police. Batman could work with them, but they’re all corrupt, weak, and not as good as him. (Except Gordon. Batman has generously determined that Gordon is worthy to be contacted, though he always disappears before Gordon’s done talking, just to remind Gordon who’s the bitch in this relationship.)

Batman isn’t just “the man,” Bruce Wayne is also The Man. He’s a rich, white, handsome man who comes from an old money family and is the main employer in Gotham. He owns half the property in the city. In a very real sense, Gotham belongs to him, and he inherited all of it.

True, it’s a very American version of aristocracy, based on wealth rather than divine right, but in practice it’s basically the same. The myth of aristocracy is that class is genetic, that some people are just born good enough to rule, and that this inherent goodness can be passed down from generation to generation. It’s long been established, and Grant Morrison’s recent “Return of Bruce Wayne” miniseries reaffirmed, that there has always been a Wayne in Gotham City, and that the state of the city reflects the status of the Waynes at the time. The implied message of Batman: Year One, and Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Beyond, and so on is if the Waynes are absent from Gotham, the entire city falls apart.

This gives Batman’s origin an Arthurian “king-in-exile” element. “Banished” from Gotham by the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne returns to reclaim his throne and redeem his land. But instead of reclaiming it from usurping uncle or foreign invader, Batman must take Gotham back from a rising underclass.

Just look at who he fights. Superman (for example) fights intergalactic dictators, evil monopolists, angry generals, and dark gods, i.e. symbols of abusive authority. Batman fights psychotics, anarchists, mob bosses, the mentally ill, and environmentalists, i.e. those who would overthrow the status quo. Superman fights those who would impose their version of order on the world. Batman fights those who would unbalance the order Batman himself imposes on Gotham.

Consider the Penguin. He’s a criminal, a thug. But what really distinguishes him from other villains is his pretensions to being upper class. The tux, the monocle, the fine wine and fine women, running for mayor…. He tries to insinuate himself with actual socialites, some of whom are attracted to his air of danger, but most of whom are repulsed by his “classless” manners. And when his envy and resentment of his “betters” turns to violence, Bruce steps in to teach him his place.

And it’s not just Mr. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. Hugo Strange, Black Mask, Bane, and Catwoman are all villains from lower class, dirt poor backgrounds who want to be upper class, who want to be one of the rich and famous at one of Bruce’s fabulous fetes, but just can’t pull it off. (Well, Catwoman can, but Selina’s in a class all by herself.)

Even Harvey Dent, before he became Two-Face, envied and resented his friend Bruce Wayne, because Wayne had money and Harvey had to work for everything he got. And then there are the villains who have a vendetta against C.E.O.’s of powerful corporations, either for revenge (Mr. Freeze, Clayface) or out of principle (Ra’s al Ghul, Poison Ivy). There’s a class war going on in Gotham, and Batman has taken the side of the rich.

Of course, Batman doesn’t like the upper class he belongs to, either! Shallow, petty, boring, and vain, they know nothing of the pain and suffering he sees every night when he hunts killers through the slums of Gotham, every day when he closes his eyes. But does he dislike his wealthy peers because they don’t appreciate how wealthy they are? Or is it because they aren’t wealthy enough to appreciate how much responsibility he has?

But even if he thinks they’re upper class twits, he really doesn’t do anything about it. He leaves them in place, protects them from harm, flirts with and beds them. They’re not the bad guys, after all. It’s all those poor evil people. The one’s who keep crashing the gate, the ones who happened to be hurt in the hunt for profits. If it comes to a clash between the twit and the poor schlub they screwed over and disfigured, Batman tends to side with the twit. (To his disgust, yes, but he’ll do it.)

And with Batman Inc., Bruce Wayne’s plutocracy only grows. Before, he was content to rule only Gotham, aided by specifically appointed allies. Now, he spreads his influence to Tokyo, Paris, and other cities all over the world by funding stand-ins to fight in his name, but only if these people act and dress exactly like him. Once again, it’s up to the rich, white man to go to other places around the world and solve their problems for them.

Because Batman, and only Batman, knows best.

Steven Padnick is a comic book editor. By day.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/batman-plutocrat/feed/52I Am Catwoman, Hear Me Roar Giveawayhttps://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/catwoman-giveaway/
https://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/catwoman-giveaway/#commentsMon, 31 Jan 2011 21:00:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/catwoman-giveaway/
I have a stash of Catwoman comics from the 90’s tucked away in my closet. For Batman week, I was going to re-read them to decipher who the real Catwoman might be, complete with pseudo-academic nuances like what she meant to nineties feminism and her role as an object of desire. But after a few issues, I realized that bringing all that to a comic series can become a labyrinthine task worthy of better scholars than myself. I also realized I wasn’t as interested in Catwoman’s symbolism or existentialism as much as which Catwoman is the best.

A question that may be forever open to debate.

With the recent announcement of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle in Christopher Nolans’ The Dark Night Rises, I thought it’d be fun to discuss our favorite Catwomen—be they Julie Newmar or Halle Berry (I promise, no hate will come to you if you admit it)—and what Anne Hathaway and Nolan’s intentions might be for Catwoman’s canon. Will she be the street-smart prostitute of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One and Mindy Newell’s Her Sister’s Keeper, or the eco-terrorist vigilante like the 1990’s Catwoman/Knightfall tie-in? Maybe she’ll just go back to her roots to steal jewels and Batman’s heart? Who knows; Selina Kyle wears many masks.

I’ll throw in that my favorite Catwoman is Tim Burton and Michelle Pfeiffer’s version. In Burton’s telling, Selina Kyle is an unglamorous working girl—a bit of a doormat who is walked over by her powerful boss Max Shreck, and life in general. She works hard, and tries to excel so much that it gets her thrown out of a window. Having lived a quiet and obedient life with little esteem, the resurrected Selina Kyle rejects all manners and customs, and goes on an anarchic rampage, destroying everything in her path, especially if its Shreck’s property.

And through all of this rage and volcanic anger, Michelle Pfeiffer plays Selina Kyle calmly, and takes everything in stride. She doesn’t try to sex it up more than necessary, and she doesn’t resort to hysterics. Pfeiffer and Burton’s Catwoman is sort of an all-purpose Everywoman version of the villainess, making her more sympathetic and relatable.

And… I like the stitching on her catsuit.

So, what about all you Bats and Kittens out there? Which Catwoman is the best?

To up the ante, I’m giving away four comic books from my personal Catwoman collection, including her first graphic novel, Defiant.

The Official Rules: To enter, just talk about who your favorite Catwoman is and why. You can post as many times as you like in the natural course of the discussion, of course. A winner will be randomly selected by noon EST, Friday 2/4. Please check your email Monday or Tuesday following; if we don’t hear back from the winner in 24 hours, another winner will be chosen.

S. J. Chambers is the Articles Senior editor at Strange Horizons. Her first book, The Steampunk Bible, co-authored with Jeff VanderMeer, will be out from Abrams Images in May, 2011.

Batman’s first big-screen appearance came in a 1943 serial by Columbia Pictures, who produced another in 1949. In the days before television when movie theaters provided the only audiovisual entertainment available, serials were popular and an essential part of the moviegoing experience; basically, TV before TV. The serial form seems a natural one for a comic-book adaptation: episodes of 15-20 minutes are approximately the length (going by the rough ratio of one minute of screen time per page) of one individual issue of a comic, not to mention the shared propensity for action and cliffhanger endings. Batman, almost immediately after his introduction, became an extremely popular hero, and thus a natural for his own serial.

The Batman of Columbia’s first serial would bear some very striking, some might say fundamental, differences to the Batman of Detective Comics. For one, the Batman of the serial was working directly for the U.S. government as a contract agent. This choice was not arbitrary: in 1943, the United States was fully engaged in World War II against the Axis, and the entertainment industry was working in a far closer manner with the government than we, nearly seventy years later, are accustomed (or frankly, would be comfortable).

The upshot of that collaboration was that whenever possible, popular cinema would explicitly and unambiguously endorse the American war effort; Batman’s vigilantism, however identical his ultimate goals were with those of the police, was nonetheless too complicated for Columbia, who insisted on Batman joining civil service for the serial. (Detective Comics had no such problems with nuance, allowing Batman to remain in the private sector, an altogether more apt place for someone with a secret identity.)

This alliance with the war effort also meant that, rather than the Joker, Catwoman, Two-Face, or any other extant villain in the Batman comics, the first serial’s villain was an evil Japanese scientist named Dr. Daka, who sought to conquer America by turning the populace into zombie slaves. This end would be achieved through the use of a laboratory full of really cool-looking stuff (especially on the extremely low budget for which the serial was produced; the damage wrought by that low budget could be seen in literally every other aspect of the serial), not least among which were television monitors to keep an eye on stuff throughout Daka’s lair (the reception on the lair’s monitor is practically HD sharp, no less) and the “radium gun,” a device coming in various sizes, any of which were capable of blowing stuff up.

For much of the serial, Daka doesn’t appear to be doing anything of any major import. He turns Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend’s uncle into a zombie and he maintains a trap door in his office that leads, after a bit of a drop, to a pit of alligators, and he does feed a couple people to the alligators, but the bulk of his efforts to conquer the U.S.A. for the Land of the Rising Sun consist of asking that people refer to him as “Nipponese” rather than “jap” or “oriental.”

In this regard, the first Batman serial falls squarely within the genre of the Yellow Peril tale, an inherently racist form, as it features exclusively demonic East Asian villains (who, to make matters worse, only ever hail from China or Japan; the rest of Asia is considered too insignificant to even be subjected to racist caricature), with even the feeble concession of having an Asian good guy so rare as to not even exist. With the war against Japan, Yellow Peril stories with Japanese villains were very popular, whether as propaganda or legitimate expressions of American attitudes toward Japan.

That said, the racism in the Batman serial is so over-the-top that it becomes comic. Daka, played by J. Carrol Naish (a white guy in makeup), is the most compelling character in the entire serial and the only one who, including Batman and Robin, displays any consistency from episode to episode. Naish is clearly having a massive amount of fun hamming it up, and his accent is absolutely fascinating: an oily New York accent with intermittent odd, vaguely Asian flourishes. His performance is simultaneously fascinating and grotesque.

Naish also establishes a pattern that would repeat throughout Batman movies: the villain being more compelling than the hero. Lewis Wilson makes an oily, ineffectual Bruce Wayne (and one with a honking foghorn Boston accent), upon whom one wishes a kick to the codpiece from love interest Linda Page (Shirley Patterson). One wonders what Linda sees in Bruce Wayne: she’s got a job, she’s reasonably together, and he’s some putz wandering around with this eerily devoted teenage boy who’s constantly at his side. Named Dick, no less.

As Batman and Robin, though, Wilson and Douglas Croft acquit themselves well in the action scenes, though Wilson is a man of sufficient girth as to perhaps be the pioneer of the “fat guy in a baggy costume” era of superhero cinema (which, of course, met its apex with George Reeves’ television Superman of the 50s). The fight scenes make heavy use of undercranked camera—known in layman’s terms as “everything looks all sped up”—and display a bizarre inconsistency that doesn’t even really seem to have much to do with narrative expediency: sometimes Batman and Robin can take out ten guys all by themselves, sometimes one drunk fat guy makes mincemeat of them both.

Still, all (considerable) flaws aside, the first serial is not without entertainment value, though most of that entertainment value is in those flaws. It also, surprisingly, was the introduction of the Batcave into the Batman canon. It contains an array of impressive gadgets—on par with Dr. Daka’s—and the shadows of bats being shaken on sticks by production assistants. It may have been cheesy, but neither Rome nor the Batcave were built in a day. In addition to this, due to the popularity of William Austin’s performance as Alfred, the butler’s appearance in the comics began to take on more of a resemblance to Austin—tall and thin with a mustache—than he had before. These would be the two most lasting legacies of the first Batman serial.

Columbia, following the success of the first serial, gave it another try in 1949. This time, with the war over and all the attendant propaganda considerations no longer necessary, returned to a more traditional, self-employed Batman (and less racism). Batman and Robin were recast with Robert Lowery and John Duncan, and the glaring flaws of the first two actors (Lewis Wilson’s hilarious Boston accent, Douglas Croft looking at least a decade too old to be called a “boy” anything, let alone a wonder) replaced with an inoffensive, neutral dullness. The Batman costume is still rather loose on Lowery, although this was due to it being the same costume worn by the gentleman who played Superman in that serial, who was considerably taller than Lowery, who was in visibly better shape than Wilson.

The villain this go-around is a shadowy, mysterious sort who answers to The Wizard. He can do cool stuff, i.e. become invisible and make things explode, and his identity remains a mystery until the very last episode, whereupon it is revealed (spoiler alert) that rather than it being the scientist, The Wizard is really the scientist’s valet. However, since that one mildly interesting twist comes after 14+ episodes of run-of-the-mill 40s pulp melodrama, its impact is lessened. One other item of note: Batman/Bruce Wayne’s love interest in the serial was Vicki Vale, only recently introduced in the comics at that point, whose popularity in the serial led to her becoming a long-standing institution in the Batman universe.

Bizarrely, as offensive as the 1943 serial could be, the go-for-broke weirdness of certain aspects made it slightly more interesting, and the mere fact of it being offensive made it more interesting than the 1949 iteration. Both suffer from extremely low budgets and from Columbia and supervising producer Sam Katzman caring little about attention to any detail other than the bottom line. In the 1949 serial, the Bat Signal can be seen during the day. Batman pulls an acetylene torch from his utility belt with no tank. Et cetera. While neither serial is particularly well done or more than intermittently even a Batman story, they are not without a certain cracked charm. The kind of cineaste who appreciates the oeuvre of the legendary Edward D. Wood, Jr. (one of whose associates, George H. Plympton, was one of the writers of the 1949 serial) will find much to appreciate in these serials. Although one caveat is necessary: do not attempt to watch either serial in its entirety in one sitting, nor both within one 24 hour span. Let the voice of shaken, traumatized experience advise you: take a break or two.

]]>https://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/big-screen-batman-the-1943-and-1949-batman-serials/feed/10A Batman For Every Seasonhttps://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/a-batman-for-every-season/
https://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/a-batman-for-every-season/#commentsMon, 31 Jan 2011 15:00:00 +0000http://www.tor.com/2011/01/31/a-batman-for-every-season/Once upon a time, I had the great privilege of sharing a table with Mike Ford, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Dave Howell, and Neil Gaiman to participate in a Bat-discussion with the following description: Batman is a rock-solid icon—and changes with the wind. From the 1930s “guy who punches everything” to the cheesy trivializations of the […]]]>

Once upon a time, I had the great privilege of sharing a table with Mike Ford, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Dave Howell, and Neil Gaiman to participate in a Bat-discussion with the following description:

Batman is a rock-solid icon—and changes with the wind. From the 1930s “guy who punches everything” to the cheesy trivializations of the 1950s and the pop caricatures of the 1960s, to Miller’s epochal The Dark Knight Returns and the later movies, this supposedly consistent character has undergone major metamorphoses. What happened, why, and what’s cool about it?

In the course of the discussion, we touched upon a number of caped crusader flavors. Individual preferences were expressed; but a consensus soon emerged—that what makes Batman great is the multiplicity of ways in which he has been, and can be rendered. The Batman character transcends the editorial, story writing, and artistic styles of any given production team. I came away from this discussion believing (and still believe, today) that Batman is an essential piece of American folklore.

My ideas on the subject may be skewed a bit. Batman has been part of my reading experience since I was five years old. In the 2nd grade, my teacher felt it necessary to confiscate my class notebook, which contained blue and gray pencil sketches emulating the square jaw and flowing cowl of Dick Sprang’s Caped Crusader. Several years later, at age 10, I visited the DC Comics editorial offices for the first time. Bob Kane took time out from his labors at the drawing board to autograph a piece of original Batman panel art for me.

Batman in 1954, as rendered by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang, had an M.O. that almost perfectly matched my childhood fantasies and expectations. Not only was Batman the World’s Greatest Detective, identifying suspects with his Crime Computer and analyzing evidence with an electron microscope, but he also operated from a cave full of super-science bat vehicles. He could chase down lawbreakers on land, sea, and air with the Batmobile, the Batmarine, and the Batplane. My only complaint about the Batmobile was that it refused (at this point in history) to sprout wings on demand and take flight.

(Flying was the genetically-transmitted dream of all 1950s proto-science fiction fans. While other kids in the neighborhood dressed up in cowboy suits and shot at each other with cap pistols, we tossed cap rockets into the air, flew balsa wood model airplanes, and mailed in boxtops for space helmets. Flying was the only one-up, I thought, that that other Superhero really had going for him. )

Imagine the thrill my eight-year old self experienced when the issue pictured left turned up in the comic book rack at my local candy store. Batman with wings! Those of you accustomed to 21st century versions of the character flying around at will, via jetpack, should understand this: in 1954, Batman with his own set of wings was an amazing, dreamlike concept. In 2nd grade art period, several of us attempted to overcome gravity by drawing the experimental flying cars described in My Weekly Reader and Junior Scholastic. Things like this and this confirmed to me that the DC Comics creative staff were kindred spirits. (To browse through a whole bunch more Bat-covers, click here. You don’t have to limit yourself to my childhood golden era. Come back when you’re ready for more Bat-talk.)

So what did happen to Batman after the cheesy trivializations of the late 1950s and early ’60s (Bathound, Bat-Mite, dinosaur fights); and what was cool about it? A dedicated scholar might be tempted to expand the list of Batman flavors included in Teresa’s excellent Minicon panel précis: Frank Miller’s Dark Knight owes something to the long-eared Night Ghost created by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams (and taken up by Jim Aparo). In turn, Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett, and Paul Dini lightened Miller’s Dark Knight, creating several new flavors of Batman in the DC animated world.

And what are we to make of the version from the 1960s TV show, described and idealized by James Beard? (At the least, Tim Burton was influenced by this Batman with respect to costume design for his live-action movies.)

Ten years ago, when we held our Batman discussion at Minicon, I found myself in a bit of dialectic opposition to Teresa Nielsen Hayden (never really a very enviable position to be in). Teresa countered my nostalgia for the “Fair Universe” Batman of my childhood by pointing out that the universe isn’t actually fair. For Teresa, the avenging juggernaut of a caped crusader conjured by Frank Miller (pictured right) in The Dark Knight Returnswas the truest vision of the character’s potential. Teresa spoke about the emergence of this Batman as a citizen of Fritz Leiber’s “City of Dreadful Night.”

The “City of Dreadful Night” is a gothic concept in the literature of science fiction and fantasy. It was well-exemplified in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, in the novels and short stories of Fritz Leiber:

Looking toward the commoners’ section of Megatheopolis, Jarles was reminded of pictures he had seen of the cities of the Black Ages, or Middle Ages—or whatever that period of the Dawn Civilization had been called.

Fans of Frank Miller’s vision should certainly find echoes of that vision in Fritz Leiber’s work:

But every power-crazy, people-despising dictatorship breeds its own revolution. In the society of Megatheopolis, the revolutionaries use the scientific knowledge which they have obtained from renegade priests and from self-taught scientists among the people to create a counter-religion based upon curious modifications of the ancient cult of Satanism. The revolutionaries live in cellars, sewers, abandoned buildings and tunnels (forgotten subways?) and, of course, have their spies within the ruling priesthood, itself.

Gather Darkness

If you place Frank Miller’s Batman in a melting pot: add a cup of Neal Adams’ Night Ghost, mix in a few tablespoons of the somersaulting World’s Greatest Detective, and sift this through the roots of classic American short story writers (O’Henry, Bret Harte, maybe even a bit of early Kurt Vonnegut), then you can begin to approximate the contribution to the Batman gestalt made by Bruce Timm in the 1990s. Out of Timm’s melting pot comes Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures. Like Grant Morrison in present-day DC comic books, Bruce Timm is fully cognizant of the entire history of the character. With help from collaborators Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, and Darwyn Cooke, the Timm-animated Batman pays tribute to the great creators in Batman’s history. The DCAU (DC Animated Universe) team puts the steel-jawed crusader into a Gotham cityscape inspired by the 1989 live-action movie. The Timm Batman operates in the “City of Night,” but this city is a bit less dreadful than Frank Miller’s or Fritz Leiber’s. Their Batman has an element of gothic romance that Miller’s lacks: “I am Vengeance, I am the Night!”

Bruce Timm’s animation style contains hints of many classic comic book artists, from the Max Fleischer animators (pictured right) in Paramount’s 1940s Superman to character caricatures in the tradition of MAD Magazine’s Willie Elder. But, for me, the outstanding characteristic of Batman: TAS is its fine, tight writing and plotting. Batman: TAS and its successor (The New Adventures) contain the finest storytelling you can find in any version of Batman. In these stories, Batman is always a significant character. But, wisely, the writers don’t always make him the central character of the story.

Op cit: Batman TAS episode 18, “Beware the Gray Ghost,” focuses on the career and subsequent decline of TV actor Simon Trent. The episode opens with young Bruce Wayne eagerly following the Gray Ghost’s adventures on the family TV set. It then cuts to the present day (1992), where Batman is investigating a series of bombings. The bombings bear a strong resemblance to the fictional “Mad Bomber” episode of The Gray Ghost that Bruce saw as a child. We see Trent living alone in a small apartment—surrounded by Gray Ghost memorabilia and rejected for new parts—due to the typecasting of his early career. In despair, Trent trashes his apartment and sells his Gray Ghost memorabilia to a toy store. After falling asleep, he wakes up to find his Gray Ghost costume returned—with an attached note from Batman asking for help. Trent meets with Batman and is, at first, reluctant to offer any help. But when Batman subsequently finds himself in a cul-de-sac, you can guess what happens.

After Batman and Trent combine to track down and apprehend the “real life” bomber, Batman shows Trent a special corner of the Batcave. The Gray Ghost merchandise Bruce collected as a child is on permanent display there. (Pictured right.) A Batman For
Every Season by Lenny Bailes

The voice actor who played the Gray Ghost in this episode is Adam West. The episode was specifically produced by Bruce Timm as a tribute to West.

Gray Ghost notwithstanding, I find myself unable to resonate with the concept of Adam West’s Batman as the truest and best version of the character. It’s hard to dispute Teresa’s notion that a “boy scout” Batman is less interesting than the Miller one from the “City of Dreadful Night.” (The two bat-images linked in this paragraph are both from the Warren Ellis creation: Planetary: Night on Earth (2003), where Ellis plays with the notion of Batman actually shifting between alternate versions of himself in real time.)

To be fair to James Beard’s thesis that Batman ’66 is the Batman we should all follow, my reading is that James freely cites elements from the TV series and early ’50s comic books, the work of Chuck Dixon in Detective Comics, and the DC Animated Universe to put forth the idea that Batman is a good-natured, square shooting guy who always wins. The question that might be asked is whether Batman always prevails because his heart is pure, or because he’s smarter and more resourceful than anyone else in the world. Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Stan Berkowitz reinforce at least the “smarter and more resourceful” part of this in their treatment of Batman for the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited animated episodes. Their JLU Batman is a bit tougher and smarter than he was in the solo adventures—possibly because he has to be to hang with the ramped-up heroes and super-villains on the JLU turf. (As voiced by the wonderful Kevin Conroy, the JLU Batman is also a crooner.)

In our Minicon discussion on this topic, Neil Gaiman cited his own ultimate exemplar of Batman: a story where the caped crusader has been submerged below the surface in a pit of quicksand. For any other mortal man that would have been the end. But this is Batman! Presently, two arms shoot back above the surface of the quicksand and an indomitable, indefatigible figure extricates himself from the pit.

The “good-natured, square shooting” Batman finds his most recent representation in the children’s TV series Batman: The Brave and the Bold. This series seems to have been dually targeted, at an 8-to-10- year-old audience and at their DCAU-addicted parents. Batman, here, is not unlike the square-jawed Bill Finger/Dick Sprang (or Sheldon Moldoff) version from 1954. We discover that Batman is best friends with everyone who’s anyone from the last 50 years of DC Comics. I liked watching it! Every episode didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat, but I enjoyed seeing Bat-Mite answer a disgruntled fan (and moderate the DC editorial staff) at a 5th-dimensional comic convention.

I’m not going to forget Neil Gaiman’s vision of Batman. It may be the most lasting one. In my last ten years of life in the United States, I’ve wished several times that that guy who can extricate himself from quicksand pits (or go up against a combination of Superman, Luthor, and Brainiac) was real.

Lenny Bailes is a longtime science fiction fan, who helps put on small science fiction literary conventions and even still publishes a fanzine. IT specialist by day and college instructor by night, he desperately tries to find time for other reading, writing, and music-making.